


equestrian au

by Commissioner



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Enemies to Lovers, F/M, I'm kidding, I'm not sorry, In case you were wondering, Levi with depression insomnia, and it's about how toxic unregulated capitalism is killing this country, and need at least two healthy father figures in my life, basically this story is about rape culture in the equestrian world, because it's a problem, closeted erwin, erumike as gay dads, i am taking suggestions for a title, i couldn't think of a title for it i'm sorry, i have a lot of daddy issues, i made him a dumb fuckboi, i made the acwnr trio irish and it's pretty important, i was like i know something about that, i'll give you the first three chapters to binge and then update biweekly, i've just been calling it eq au, it's incredible that we're this far and I still don't have a real title, levi's just a fuckboi, multiple characters with nearly crippling anxiety, only real smut is between Levi/OFC, out and proud Mike, please do not take this work's title and my chapter titles as a reflection of my writing ability, please help, probably ends in a super happy way, protag with ADHD, read if you like to cry, sides of other ships that I'm not gonna tag, so it's a feel good story, so much conflict you will wonder when these characters ever have time to be happy, someone said something about an equestrian attack on titan au, this happened because of a tumblr post, this started as weekly drabbles and now it's a fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-19
Updated: 2020-06-14
Packaged: 2020-07-08 19:57:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 14
Words: 122,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19875223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Commissioner/pseuds/Commissioner
Summary: the equestrian au that somebody somewhere expressed a mild interest in about five years ago.





	1. prologue

“You got a favorite color of horse?” Mike asks Erna while he's rounding the animal she's holding, eyeing it's hooves, ruining the perfectly good silence she’d been enjoying.

She curls one side of her lips at him. He's always asking stupid questions. She's too grown up for this.

But she still answers, “Bay,” to see why he’s asking, because he’s sparked her curiosity.

He hums with his deep, gruff voice, standing square in front of the horse, he squints a little. Then he stoops and reaches for his shoeing box, pulling it over easily on its well greased wheels. He picks a clipping hammer from it like it weighs about the same as a toothpick. While he's doing this, he says with a wise-sounding voice, “Can tell a lot about a person by their favorite color horse.”

Erna watches his hands closely as they tuck the hammer away under the waist of his suede chaps. He wheels the box to the horse's front, stands at its shoulder, and gives it a gentle push. The horse, eight year old Xena, picks her hoof up easily and Mike holds it between his legs. Erna asks him, “So what can you tell?”

“Oh, me? Nothin” He gives a soft grunt as he pulls the old horseshoe off, drops it on the floor, and stands to move to the next hoof. “But others could, probably.”

She clucks her tongue at him and mutters, “dumb old man,” to herself. 

Farriers aren't born, she thinks, they're made by old magic in the thin, fae places. Released into the human world only to tease people like her with shit like this forever. A playful sense of humor and mischievous nature seem to be requisite to the job, though they have nothing to do with shoeing horses. 

He’s walking out the door to get something from the back of the truck and she shouts after him, “Do you remember the first thing you ever said to me?”

“Oh, I'm sure it was somethin’ _devastatingly_ brilliant _and_ illuminating,” he teases. 

Xena lifts a hoof and drops it back down, trying to rid herself of the flies biting at her ankles, and Erna rubs her soft nose absently. Mike smiles at her when he pops back in with a new horseshoe a similar size and shape to the one he just pulled, though it must be vastly different in all sorts of ways Erna can’t see with her untrained eye. He flashes her that somehow sweet and condescending smirk as he catches her finger combing Xena’s forelock. Being affectionate with the horses isn't her thing. Affection comes from people who haven't raised, trained, and said goodbye to almost a hundred horses already. She shows what affection she has through care, by spending five minutes to smooth out a bed of wood shavings, forcing herself awake in the middle of a cold, clear winter night to make sure water buckets haven't frozen. She isn't the kind of girl to throw her arms around a horse's neck and give it a kiss. Not unless the barn is empty and quiet and she really needs to.

Erna takes her hand back after sweeping Xena's forelock to the side. She tells Mike the correct answer to her query, “You asked me if I remember when they first came out with color TV.”

He had. Completely offhanded, as if he was asking if she could remember who won a local baseball game last night. She'd been seventeen, working on Erwin's farm for only two weeks at the time. 

“I remember that now,” he says, gruff and half attentive to her. He lets Xena have her hoof back and stands, taking the new shoe and his hammer back out to his truck where the forge is. 

She raises her voice to be heard over the roaring sound of heat and the ringing metal on metal. “I thought you were fucking crazy, or dumb, or both.”

When he comes back in, his hair a little more damp with sweat, and his white t shirt a little more transparent, he says, “You might not be wrong.”

He isn't as interested as she wants him to be. He isn't treating this with the amount of importance she's come to feel about it in the last minute. She paints the whole picture for him. “I said I didn't and you responded that you didn't either because you hadn't been born yet.”

“Well…” he says, as if he doesn’t see the problem. “I wasn’t wrong, was I? Did you think I was that old?”

“You’re ridiculous.”

“You think so?” he challenges her.

Xena tries to pull her hoof away from the farrier, impatient with his examination of the fit of the shoe he wants to nail to it. Erna gives her a tug with the lead rope, lightly, not much of a punishment. Mike takes her hoof up again, pulls it between his knees, and says, “Do you remember why I asked you that?”

“How would I know?”

“Well, you seem to remember so much of everything else,” he teases her. 

“More than you,” she sasses back. He always brings this out of her. Starts teasing her and makes her feel like she’s no more than a brat. 

“Because I remember,” he grunts, holding Xena’s hoof tight while he reaches for the right size of nail from his tool carrier, “you gettin’ the short straw from those girls you were workin’ with at the time-”

“Erica and Cody,” Erna interrupts. 

Mike doesn’t veer from his point. “Who screwed up and turned the horses I was supposed to work on that day out in the mud.”

Erna doesn’t have anything to say to that. She didn’t remember that.

“Which put me in a _frightful_ mood.” He twists off the end of the nails he just finished hammering through Xena’s hoof. “I was in here fuming. You were there,” he gestures at where she’s standing right now with an elbow over his back, “hosing mud off the horses hooves, hand drying them with a towel, apologizing up and down for something you didn’t do.”

He starts rasping at the outer wall of the hoof, smoothing it and the nails down. With the scene more colorfully painted, she can now remember how nervous she was when she was seventeen, and how scary this job was. 

“You looked about a hundred pounds, your sneakers were soaking wet, and you were terrified of me.”

“I was not,” she’s quick to deny, strongly. 

Now he lets Xena put her hoof down, he stands up, and he points at her with his hammer and a wry grin, “Don’t try to lie to me. You were shaking.”

“I weighed a hundred and twenty pounds.”

He puts his hands up as if in need of defense though he towers over her at 6’5” to her 5’3”, “I wasn’t askin’.”

“No, you were just _tellin’_ me I look scrawny.” She cocks her hip and shoots him a nasty look.

Mike scratches at the stubble on his chin, looking troubled, like he’s dug himself a hole. He starts to head for his truck again and on his way, he says, “Petite!”

“I’ll kick your ass, old man!”

He laughs, deep and loud and he stops, comes back in the doorway, takes a breath and says, “The point being, I had to make that stupid joke to get you to laugh.”

Erna gasps as if he has just accused her of horrible crimes and she says, “I did _not_ _laugh_.”

“I seem to recall you laughing,” he teases as he goes back to the truck to shape another horse shoe.

“I would _never_ _laugh_ at one of your _stupid_ _dad_ jokes!” she squeals while fighting a smile. Xena pushes her shoulder with her nose and tries to scratch her head on Erna’s chest, which Erna stops right away with a light slap to her soft nose and a loving, “Fuck off.”


	2. chapter one

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> tl;dr backstory

Erwin doesn’t notice the stablehands on his farm much. He cuts their checks on time, keeps an eye out for them as he goes about his business, and lets them work relatively unsupervised, never getting close enough to remember their names for more than a few weeks after they quit. Their average length of employment is about four months. The ones who can’t stand the early mornings and hard work - the ones who thought they’d be doing more riding and rubbing elbows with famous trainers and riders - last about two months at most. The exceptionally hard workers will stay on for up to half a year. 

He  _ notices  _ Erna for the first time when she’s been working for him for about three weeks. He’s looking for an old halter he wouldn’t mind giving away with the horse he’s dropping off at Nile’s barn later in the day. He doesn’t want to have to part with the nice leather halter it’s currently wearing if he can help it. On his way through the feed room, to the hay loft, where spares and things are stored in dusty tack trunks, he notices that one of the stablehands is different. Of the three stablehands, he only recognizes two, and he asks Erica, the stablehand with the most seniority at the moment, tactfully, “Did Sara leave?”

It’s a passive way of asking, “Did we hire someone new?” Erica tilts her head at him, then smiles. The scrawny girl with dark brown, almost black hair in a messy bob, bangs threatening to grow over her eyes goes back to measuring and scooping grain into the bucket she’s holding while Erica says, “You signed her last check a few weeks ago.”

“Oh.” He must not have noticed yet. He’s sure he would have caught it this week. Erica tells him that Erna is new. She doesn’t point out that he should know that. He hired her. 

With the state of things, Erwin doesn’t fret over things like stablehands. He hires them over the phone if they call about the ad placed in the local paper, and that’s about the end of his involvement. He pays them to work from seven in the morning until noon, and if the work gets done, then he really doesn’t care how long it actually takes.

He bounds up the wooden steps of questionable sturdiness and into the loft of the barn. He finds a halter in one of the tack trunks that must be at least twenty years old, yellowed with age and dirt, no telling what color the nylon once was, part of it held together with baling twine. He doesn’t think twice about taking it and putting it on the horse Nile is going to be leasing.

Erwin notices Erna a second time when she  _ almost _ talks to him. He’s looking over the mail when Erica approaches him with the girl attached to her hip. Erica, who’s sunny and tall and sure of herself, always has been since she walked up to his door and asked for the job she’s doing now, says simply, “She wants to ride.”

That usually happens. Not many kids take a job on a horse farm without wanting to ride, and being able to say you rode the Smith horses still carries some weight in the show jumping world. It’s a star to have on your resume if you’re staying in this sport in any capacity.

He doesn’t even look up. “Have her sign a waiver.” They start to turn away to go back to the barn. He pauses and gives the new girl a quick look. She’s scrawny as all hell, skin and bones. He worries if she could even handle one of their horses, and he calls after her, “Erica.” When they both turn around, he says, “Start her on the pony.”

He swears the expression that flashes over that girl’s face could curdle milk, but she still doesn’t say a single word to him. 

“The pony” isn’t a literal pony. Just a runt at 14.3 hands, a few inches shy of being a pony and being worth a six figure sum to some rich parents who want a good starter for their kid - something that can qualify and win the pony finals. Ten year old Sienna (named for her color) doesn’t fit that bill, but can get around a Level 2 jumping course without a stick or spur, and is faithful and honest as you’d want a childrens pony to be. 

They get back on their way toward the main barn and he can hear the girl hiss under her breath at Erica, “I can  _ ride _ ,” and those are the first words he ever hears her say.

Erwin slides the few envelopes he has into his shirt pocket, smirking and shaking his head. Everyone always  _ thinks _ they can ride. 

He stopped bothering to watch the exercise riders take the horses on their daily hack when he was small, back when they had exercise riders and not teenage stable hands pulling double duty. It’s ten to fifteen minutes of walk, trot, canter in each direction. Fascinating if you’ve never seen a horse and rider do flat work. Just enough to keep the competitive horses in shape between shows. No jumping for fear an inexpert rider will ruin a horses training. The only people who jump these horses are the FEI level equestrians who compete on them. 

Later, he takes a walk over to the unfenced grass field across the road, where the girls hack the horses when it’s nice out. Otherwise they’re in the small, dusty indoor ring directly out back behind the end of the main barn. He tells himself it’s just for the sake of the walk. It’s good to check the perimeter of the farm occasionally. 

He happens to walk up just as Erica is giving the other girl - he can’t remember her name already - a boost up onto Sienna’s back. Her eyes are obscured from his view by the visor of her black helmet, but he can tell where she’s looking. Good riders over exaggerate their eye movements, turning them into whole head turns, which goes down the spine, through the hips, angling the legs, so that the horse can feel and know where precisely they’re looking, and hopefully go in that direction if they’re of a mind to. The girl’s head twists over her shoulder as she brings her right rein in and back and bends the horse around her leg, turning a stretch into a turn on the forehand. Sienna plants her front hooves and side-steps with her back legs until she’s dragged a perfect circle into the grass. Then the girl turns her the other way and retraces that circle. When finished she leans back, clucks her tongue a little, plays gently with the bit in the horse’s mouth, and turns her left toe out, squeezing her calf muscle against the horse’s side and getting her to stand up and turn on her hind legs, in a move called a ‘turn on the haunches,’ that Erwin knows Sienna was never trained to do. It's an intermediate dressage move. She spins her in two more perfect circles back and forth, never allowing the animal to misplace a hoof, and shows Erwin that her indignation was not unjustified before even letting the horse take one walking step forward or backward. He now understands her emphasis when she said she can “ _ ride _ ”. 

It’s not that he’s surprised she can handle a horse. He doesn’t know her background or even her name. He’s just surprised at the muscles he didn’t see before, deeply carved into her shoulders from straining at the bit on horses with too much speed, bulging in her calves from kicking at sides, squeezing into ribs, wrapping around barrels and holding on for dear life. She’s skin and bone and corded, straining muscles necessary for riding, and nothing else.

So he lets her ride. He doesn’t say anything about it and trusts Erica to keep her on appropriate horses. 

Until Erica gives him her notice. 

She wanted it to be two weeks, but she can only stand to work one more. She’s cries about how she wanted to do better. He tells her it’s alright. That’s all. Nothing that could make him feel or be perceived as liable for the fact that all of the stable hands quit, over exhausted, skinnier, and worse for wear than when he hired them. The ones that were any good always take it hard like her, crying, apologizing, torturing themselves about it. 

He wishes he could tell them how replaceable they are. Only so that they just wouldn’t feel so badly about it. 

One week later, after Erica’s last day, the girl he hired around the same time, gives him her two weeks notice. She is less broken up about it, to his relief. 

He puts out the same ad in the same local paper again. It’s the same paper that his family has subscribed to since before he was born. His father used to hire stable help the same way. Erwin wonders if he should update his methods, maybe try the internet. 

He has three stable hand positions. That’s what his budget will allow. He pays them less than minimum wage and gets away with it by offering “free room and board” in the second house on the farm, down closer to the road, and smaller than the main farm house. He hires no other on site help. It isn’t ideal, but it works out when it works out, when fate is kind enough to smile on him with three workers who know what they’re doing and get along well. Other times he’s had to deal with the trifecta: three workers at the same time without a lick of sense, experience, or work ethic between them. 

He has never… Never… had to run the farm with just one stable hand. 

Two days before the second girl’s last day he resorts to poaching. He tries to, anyway. He calls up Nile’s barn manager on her personal cell and asks if she knows anyone… anyone… even a kid who would clean some stalls in exchange for rides. 

He walks down to the farm house at the bottom of the driveway after the second girl leaves. He catches Erna - he’s learned her name by now - on the porch out front. It startles the hell out of her when he rounds the paddock fence and the corner of the house. She’d been slouched in a rocking chair, smoking a cigarette… which strikes Erwin. He never sees teenagers… just sitting… anymore. They’ve always got something in their hands, something making noise, a phone, a radio, he’s seen kids drag their laptops outside when the weather is too nice to stay inside.

After he scares the shit out of her, she bends down and smashes her cigarette onto the wooden planks. He can’t help the laugh that rumbles through his chest. He tells her it’s okay to smoke, as long as she doesn’t do it inside the house. He stops at the bottom of the three steps onto the porch and asks if she’s gonna be alright in the house by herself. 

She visibly retracts from him, leaning away in her chair and narrowing her eyes, and he suddenly realizes how creepy that would sound if not interpreted the way he meant it and he sighs, embarrassed and a little frustrated with himself. “Just,” he says, as he tents his fingers over his brow, “Do you need anything?”

“I’m fine,” she says, not relaxing at all, treating him like a leering pervert. 

For the first time, he wonders how old she is. He tries not to hire younger than sixteen. He’s not even sure of the legality of that anymore. Labor laws change, and lately he takes on the first person who applies without asking anything aside from whether they know how to handle a horse.

“Let me know if you need anything.”

He doesn’t ask her if she’s gonna be okay doing all of the work herself tomorrow, because what would he say if she answered ‘no’? When morning comes around he does his best to help. He does barn chores he hasn’t had to do since he was young. He gets dirt under his fingernails for the first time in a long time.

They stay out of each other's way. There’s no denying that it’s awkward. It breaks the unspoken rules of class, a strongly reinforced rule in this business, kept in place by traditions and the demands of unrestrained capitalism, so that when he picks up a broom in order to sweep the hay littering the aisle of the barn, she decides she can’t take it anymore and she comes out of nowhere to snatch it from him. 

The first words she says to him without being prompted are, “It’s fine. I can do it.”

That becomes sort of a catchphrase of hers.

  
  


No one applies for the job for weeks. Erwin stops trying to help Erna maintain the farm. Things get done faster without him - without anyone - in her way. She never stops, never rests, is in constant motion until the work is done, and then she disappears into that white farmhouse at the bottom of the hill.

He won’t deny that he feels little to no guilt about getting the work of three people done for the cost of one paycheck. He stops worrying so much about hiring new help until her work starts to slip. Around the third week he notices, she leaves a hose running and there’s a small flood in the lower half of the barn. Not a big deal, something a normal person might do on any day. He turns the hose off for her and helps her sweep excess water out the side door with a push broom. He chooses to ignore the dark circles under her eyes and the variously colored bruises from tripping, walking into wheelbarrow handles, catching a foal’s kick to the arm because she was too tired to get out of the way faster. He finds himself coming up with excuses to leave the farm in the middle of the day so that he won’t know when she finishes her work and how many hours of it he’s getting out of her for free. 

Finally he gets a call from one of Niles’ riding students who wants more experience on the breeding and training end of things, so long as they get to go to all of the horse shows with him and the horses when the season starts up. 

“Got to ask you something,” is how he approaches Erna about it. She’s in the middle of cleaning a stall. It’s already close to noon when she should be finishing up, and she’s only through half the barn. “Someone applied to work here.”

He thinks she looks for a moment like she’s gonna fall over from relief, so he quickly tells her what might be the deal breaker. “Boy named Reed.” 

Her face falls, and Erwin says, “I can offer him the job without the room. You wouldn’t be the first who didn’t want a boy for a roommate.”

“I…” her voice sounds strangled and he notices how fast she’s blinking. 

Breakdowns aren’t as uncommon on this farm as one would think. It’s hard work for little compensation. It wears on a person. Erwin is hardened to witnessing tears of frustrated exhaustion.

But she doesn’t break down in front of him. She drops her pitchfork in the dust and runs… past him, out of the stall, down between the paddocks to the farmhouse… her house… 

He picks up the handle of the pitchfork and groans. Cleaning stalls kills his back, reminds him that he’s too old for this. 

When he goes down to talk to her this time, he walks along the edge of the road, so that she can see him approach the house without getting spooked. She eyes him warily and doesn’t reach to put out her cigarette. 

He wonders if she’s even old enough to be smoking. 

She won’t look at him. Girl with a work ethic like hers probably wants to crawl into a hole and die over dropping her pitchfork and running. He stops at the bottom of the porch steps and looks outward, across the small piece of lawn between the house and over the grey strip of road, out over the grass field he first saw her ride in, the same field he had his first ride in when he was two years old.

His father would let a horse loose in that field, where there was no fence even then, and teach Erwin how to call them back, just by being agreeable. No force. No threats.

He asks, “Alright if I come up?” softly. 

She doesn’t look at him, but she hums a two-tone note that sounds like “m-hm,” so he moves slow, but not so slowly as to be suspicious, same as he would with a scared yearling. 

She finally offers him a look, quick and cagey like she doesn’t want to be caught. Then she offers him a cigarette. He takes it, though he doesn't like to smoke. At least he has something to do with his hands while he waits for the right time to speak again. He has to wait what feels like minutes, carefully standing there, still and patient. When his cigarette is burned half down and hers is at the filter, he says, “You don’t have to like it, but you need the help.”

He hears her inhale long and exhale even longer, like she has extra frustration and sadness stored up inside her to get out. Then she shakes her head emphatically. She tucks her knees up, holds them close to her chest, and says in a strangled, barely audible squeak, “don’t like men.”

“Well, like I said,” he reminds her sternly, because he needs her to be okay with this, because if she quits he is fucked, “he doesn’t have to live here.”

He can hear her breathing, in the same broken, uneven cadence that would be sobbing if she’d open her mouth and let the noise out, but she only inhales and exhales out her nose. Her nostrils flare and she blinks fast, keeping her eyes closed longer every time tears threaten to spill out. After a moment where he feels extraordinarily guilty for reasons he doesn’t even know, she finally says, “... Yeah.”

He takes an aspirin when he gets back up to the main house. His chest hurts. 

Reed shows up the next day and Erwin hovers. He almost wants to get in between them whenever the tall, naturally tanned, blond nineteen year old strays too near Erna’s personal space and she tenses every muscle in her body to steel hardness like a horse that’s been spooked. But at some point, she shoots him a look. He knows what it means.  _ It’s fine. I can do it.  _

And she does manage, whatever her fear was, he pretends not to suspect or know. It seems to help that Reed quickly turns out to be flamboyantly, unapologetically, obviously gay. Erna warms up to him in a matter of hours. Erwin keeps the ad in the paper and waits for the last stablehand position to be filled with significantly less anxiety. Erna ends up inviting Reed to live in one of the three farmhouse bedrooms after a week. Erwin finally sees a side of her that isn't sullen. She actually smiles and laughs and goes out and has fun. She and Reed walk up to the barn every morning yawning, chattering over hot mugs of coffee, making up games to entertain each other while they work. 

Reed quits after the summer months of the show season, deciding he would rather vacation and ride in Florida in the winter than come home to New Jersey and muck stalls and feed horses in the snow. He leaves with a glowing recommendation from a formerly famous and respected name in show jumping on his resume. New people apply and are hired. Girls this time, friends from the same lesson barn. Later, they’re gone and forgotten and the cycle continues. 

He’s seen so many people come and go, he isn’t sure if it’s that he doesn’t have enough room in his memory for the many workers who have gone in and out of his life on this farm, or if he just trained himself to forget… just to not have so much to carry around with him. He would be carrying thousands of stable hands, hundreds of grooms, eight resident equestrians and trainers, and his parents who hired all of them and taught and nurtured so many big names in this industry only to be written off as soon as they weren't competitive anymore… his mother who cried when he had a growth spurt at sixteen and became too tall to ride most horses… his father who wouldn't let him work with him after college, wouldn't even talk to him, but still couldn't stand to see the horses go to anyone else, still willed the farm to his only son.

It was a raw gift, broken, and rusted, and overgrown when Erwin stepped foot on the land for the first time since his father told him to never come back. The business is bleeding money and he wonders if his father knew that he was leaving him a stone to carry around his neck, heavy with financial burden, the weight of his past, and memories - good and bad, to punish him. 

Erwin will always wonder what he could have done with a fresh start. 

He feels regrets always. They're what give him the wrinkles near his eyes. This farm makes him feel painful nostalgia at unbidden times, in uncomfortable, mortal moments of clear memory ripped from him by the smell of oxidized steel at the bottom of a water trough, the sight of a particular ditch in the gravel driveway washed out by the rain, or the soft sound of a mare’s lips plucking individual pieces of hay from the dirt, and he remembers what this plot of land was when he was young, how busy and vibrant and rich the scenery was, how much fun he had and how much he learned and how much he loved it.

He wonders sometimes if he can ever be happy here again, or if anything he does will ever be anything but pale in comparison with his parents, or if anything he feels will stand up to the intensity of feeling he remembers from growing up here. And he keeps it to himself. He doesn't even open up to his boyfriend about his fears, because they're too big. 

Erna, without trying or knowing, whittles away at those fears, shaves a little off at a time by giving him a hard time, challenging him a little more every day, pointing it out if he makes a mistake on a grain order, arguing with him about the best way to treat an abscessed hoof until he puts his foot down and ends it with the fact that he is her boss and she had better do what he tells her to.

One day, when all he was trying to do was check on a delivery of supplements for the horses, she afflicts him with hope that he hasn’t felt in maybe twenty years, maybe even before the falling out with his father, if he’s honest with himself. It's after noon, quitting time, but there she is, rummaging through the small room in the barn that houses the furnace to heat water. He finds her while checking on what all the racket is.When he peeks in and asks what she's doing, she asks, a little out of breath, “You got a hammer around here? Nails?”

He goes and gets an ancient toolbox from the garage for the tractors. Doesn't even ask what it's for. She'd sounded so annoyed already he figured he better just give her what she asked for and inquire later. He follows her along the driveway. She looks back at him, gestures at the fence on their left. “Fucking wire fence is poking over the top rail.” He looks and sees the pointed, sharp ends of wire unfurled above the wooden rail along the top of it that is meant to keep the horses from leaning over and puncturing their throats on the ends of wire. He doesn’t know why he looks. He already knew it was like that. He sees it every day. It’s been like that for at least ten years and no ill has come from it.

She opens the gate to the field that stretches over the foot of the hill on this side of the farm, the field with the most forgiving topography, the fewest chances for a horse to fall or slip on some red shale while trotting to the fence line. This field is for the broodmares with unweaned foals learning to walk and run and play before their mothers are bred again and moved to the field all the way on the opposite end of the farm. Erna has to shoo the mothers away when they walk over, noses outstretched and nostrils flaring, sniffing for their expeced lunch (they never run if they can help it. too tired. too put out by their lovely, joyful, awkward foals nipping at their tails). Erwin slips in behind her and gives one of the mares a swipe along the forehead with his big hand. 

He knows Erna’s seen that fence every day, just like him, but only just now decided that it’s a problem worth her time. It isn’t her regular anxiety. Despite the surly confidence she carries herself with, Erwin has been able to tell for a while that she’s burdened with a lot of anxiety. He’s good at spotting it, because equestrian girls with anxiety make his best workers. They double and triple checks the locks on stall doors and fence gates. They see a rusty fence and think tetanus. But right now this is more than that. She’s  _ frustrated _ with something else. He catches up and takes the toolbox from her. Whole thing weighs probably fifty pounds and he doesn't know how she carried it this far in the first place. She frowns at him, but doesn’t complain. Only points at the corner of the fence where she wants to start. 

They can’t afford lumber. They can’t do what would be the easiest, cheapest fix, and replace the top rail of the fence with new boards. So he doesn’t know what her plan is, when she motions for him to put the toolbox down and starts rummaging through it, clucking her tongue at everything she deems useless until she finds a loose collection of nails and a hammer. 

It must be a ridiculous picture, a grown, healthy, muscular-even-in-middle-age man standing by and watching a petite teenage girl hook the claw of a hammer under the top rail and rock it to leverage the board loose. So he only watches her take off that one, then steps in when the board starts to creak and groan about being moved. She gets out of the way and he puts his hands around the top and bottom of it, wide apart so he won't just break the aged wood in half when he pulls it, nails and all, off of it's posts. 

Why he's holding a length of wooden fence, he doesn't know. He looks to her, and she points at one of the posts, taps just three inches above where the empty nail holes are now, and says, “Hold it there.”

Picking up the hammer again, she says, “Wire fence is dangerous.”

“It’s cheap.”

She places three nails in her lips, takes a fourth one and hammers it through, into the post. When she's done the rail sits slightly higher. Not enough to make much difference to the horses unless they notice how the pointy, rusty ends of loose wire are no longer sticking up above it to possibly scratch an eye or a nose on. She says, “It’s not cheap when one of these horses gets a puncture wound. How much money do you have in these broodmares that you're willing to risk it over a stupid wire fence?”

He sighs, and pops a fence rail off with his bare hands like it’s nothing. “Erna, I don’t even have the money to be spending on these nails.”

“Fuck, take it out of my paycheck then, Scrooge McDuck. You think the forty cents of that seven forty is gonna make a difference?” He doesn’t answer her. It’s quiet for a minute. She says softly, “This is a nice place. It deserves the effort.”

She reaches for a pair of pliers and kneels down and starts bending the wire away from the side of the fence that the horses live on, making it impossible for them to get their ankles poked when they rush the fence or run alongside it. 

Conversationally, he asks, “Who taught you to do this?”

“Lady who taught me to ride.”

He nods. 

She wipes her forehead with the back of her forearm, smearing both with dirt and sweat, stands there for a second, looking off toward the opposite corner of the pasture, where the sun is puncturing the clouds, and she says, “She was tough.”

He can imagine. 

He looks at her, still and gazing at the horizon for a moment, like he does lately, and wonders if there's a horse farm somewhere that she can't be happy on, too, no matter how much she'd like to be. Like he can’t be happy here.

Then she says, “These are good horses.”

He says, “I know,” puzzled as to why she felt the need to say it.

“Do you?”

He pulls another fence board down, now ahead of her by yards. “What I need is for other people to know it.”

“Yeah, well.” She spits. “Maybe act like they’re worth a couple hours of sweat and some nails.”

He stops trying to talk to her. 

But he catches her after that, or just starts to notice for the first time, her just standing and looking, the way he has before, from some good vantage point, of which there are many, to look out over the land. She breathes the air deep and skims the soles of her boots through puddles when it's raining and she goes for walks in the middle of clear nights, arms around her waist, not for sleeplessness, but because she can, simply for the feeling of freedom to do it. And he sees this place through her eyes instead of his cynical, nostalgic ones. 

She is content to stay and her reasons are her own. She loves this farm, for whatever reason, without having a history with it, without having seen its former glory, with fresh eyes. She proves it every day as other people come and go and she stays and stays and stays.

The only constant is Erna, who keeps her ground level room in the farmhouse, even when the two better rooms upstairs are empty, who sometimes gets along with the new people that come to work there and sometimes doesn’t, and who Erwin can rely on to kick him in the ass when he’s getting in his own way.


	3. chapter two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> backstory cont. basically

Erna rounds eighteen when winter comes and it's time to take about a quarter of the horses to the Winter Equestrian Festival in Florida for chances at the same prize money they were making along the northeast while it was still warm. She knows the deal already. Two stable hands go to Florida as grooms, one stays behind and tends the rest of the farm.

She volunteered enthusiastically to stay home. Strange for any other teenager, but Erwin isn't surprised for some reason. The whole show season she hasn't shown a lick of interest in coming along to any of the big shows. Devon, Princeton, Saugerties, she let them all go by, waving at the horse trailer on its way out and staying home without complaint about missing out on the excitement, doing all of the farm work herself, with all of the broodmares and foals and horses in training and in retirement. Only a whiteboard with the number of the vet to fall back on in case of an emergency… 

He isn't worried about leaving her alone for three months. She's responsible. 

“She's young,” Mike warns, after gulping down a huge glass of water at the kitchen sink. It's hot for September. A rivulet of sweat runs down his neck and Erwin is hyper focused on it as it leaves a trail over the stubble Mike never bothers to shave until he starts complaining at him about it. 

“You were younger.”

Mike had done the same job for Erwin's parents a few years, when they were real young, too young for him to start his apprenticeship with a master farrier. He lived nearby and worked for less than one of the stable hands would have, and they trusted him.

“Times were different and I was mature for my age.”

“I'd argue that she's the same.”

“Then you'd be wrong.”

Erwin tilts his head at his boyfriend… well, unofficial boyfriend… It's rare for him to be in such a mood. He wants to ask what he knows from talking to the girl for altogether an hour or two every two weeks, but he keeps his mouth shut. Mike could, and probably would, argue that two hours every two weeks is more than Erwin has ever talked to her, and he would be right. So Erwin doesn't go down that path. 

“Krista and Ymir want to go to Florida,” he says, bringing the other two stable hands who have been working there a few months into it. “I don't have a choice.”

Mike looks out the double window over the sink behind him, out at the trees down the hill between the house and the road a hundred feet away. He sniffs and sets his glass down in the big white farmhouse sink. “Gonna be a bad winter.”

Erwin doesn't know what he wants him to do. Apologize? Erna  _ wants _ to do it. Is he supposed to  _ drag _ her to Florida for the winter?

But Mike's obvious reservations make him cautious.. 

Erwin trusts Erna with the farm for no other reason than she has been a good worker for about six months, since the day he hired her. 

But he makes sure she is prepared. As the time nears, he gives her an updated list of contact information for the vet, the farrier (when Mike is unavailable), the feed store, the owners of other local barns in case of a natural disaster in which the horses need to be moved. He is confident he has thought of everything when he pins it to the inside of the medicine cabinet in the washroom. 

She squints at it with her washed out blue eyes. He looks down at her as she continues to stare, silent. He's about to walk away, because sometimes she's just like this, but suddenly she says, “Is there, like, a phone I can use?”

His head tilts and his mouth opens in amazement. “You don't have a phone?”

She snaps at him, “Can't afford one,” like that’s directly his fault, because he’s the one who pays her.

He rubs his temples with his thumb and forefinger. “You've been living here for six months now without a phone?” They took the landline out of the farmhouse years ago, seeing as no one had used it in a decade. She just shrugs at him, giving him that sour look again. She makes him feel completely infuriated sometimes. 

He has to walk away and go back to the main house to avoid saying anything he'll regret. The next day he gets her a cheap cell phone, the kind you can fill with prepaid minutes. He pays for a hundred. When he gets back, he thinks to ask her if she has a driver's license. He knows she doesn't have a car. 

He gives her the keys to the truck, the old one in the garage near the barn, and tells her only to use it if she really needs to. She doesn't have a license, so he tells her to be careful and not get caught. 

He gives her two hundred dollars in cash, just in case, he’s gonna mail her next paycheck from Wellington and doesn’t want her to be in a tough spot if anything happens. 

He talks to the owner of the cattle farm around the way on Morning Glory Road, asks him to check on her once in a while, not so that she can tell she’s being checked on, because he has a feeling she’d never forgive him. On his way back to the main house he shakes his head at himself. What does he care if she gets sore at him? She probably won’t even stay on past April.

On New Years Day, Ymir and Krista get into the older girl’s car and follow the trailer carrying eight of Erwin’s best horses down to Florida. He sticks around for a few hours, double checking on all of his ends, making sure they aren’t loose. 

He tosses two suitcases into the back of his SUV and waves at Erna while she walks by leading a horse to the paddocks for some exercise. She waves back. He says one more time to call if she needs anything, and she tells him that she won’t. 

The second he’s on the highway, it’s like entering another dimension, where his farm back home doesn’t exist. He becomes so focused on his job and his horses and their riders for the next three months that he completely forgets about Erna aside from once every two weeks when he has to mail a check back to the farm for her.

Sometimes he feels more at home in Wellington, than in his actual home. 

It is easier there for him to make business connections. It is less guarded and tightly closed off to outsiders who are not currently in the top rankings. The demographic is still overwhelmingly wealthy, but many of the riders here are doing it as a hobby, because they have that much money. His horses and his stable does pretty well at the three month long Winter Equestrian Festival, or else it wouldn’t be worth the money to ship the horses. 

He tells Mike one night after his resident rider took third in a CSI level 2 jump off that a trainer with at least fifteen students in competition is interested in one of his geldings back home, after Erwin showed him some videos of him being jumped. When Mike doesn’t react as expected, with a big, congratulatory grin, he adds that the trainer mentioned maybe wanting to start a breeding program with one of Erwin’s stallions as the sire.

And Mike just sniffs at him, leaning on his elbows on the balcony of the stucco condo Erwin rents every year. He lifts his big cigar to his mouth and puffs at it. Erwin nudges his wine glass closer to him, wanting him to lighten up and be happy for him like he expected. 

But Mike folds his hand back over the other one, cigar pinched between his huge, calloused fingers marked with scars from nails and horse teeth and hot iron, one of which is fresh from today. Mike isn’t there for him. He’s there to work. He has to follow the clients to Florida every winter, too. He likes it less than Erwin does. He thinks the weather is beastly and the clients are unrealistic about their demands. He ignores his wine and he asks, “How  _ is _ the farm?”

Erwin pauses, opens his eyes a little wider. “Fine, I guess?”

His boyfriend sniffs at him, a tic that he has when he disapproves of something. He says, “You haven’t talked to Erna.”

His brows crease and he answers, “Why would I?”

Mike shrugs one shoulder, glances quickly to his side, catching Erwin in his peripheral, through his messy sandy blond hair, and gives him a look like he doesn’t know, but he knows that he should. Erwin asks, “Why are you so worried? She’s only been responsible and reliable. Other girls close to her age have watched the farm over the winter without anything happening.”

“I’m not worried about the fuckin’ farm,” Mike mutters. 

Erwin hates seeing him this troubled. He goes to take his hand, remembers they are outside, in public, and stops himself. He says, trying to comfort him, “She’s only doing the work that she’s already proven she can do all on her own.” Mike sniffs again. Erwin pleads with him, “She was ecstatic to see the trailer leave, Mike. She  _ wanted _ to be there on her own.”

He thinks that his words are sinking in, because Mike doesn’t sniff or say a word for a very long time. 

The sun is starting to go down in all of its too brightly colored glory. 

Mike drains his wine glass in one gulp and puts his only half finished cigar in the ashtray, then he says, “You really never noticed how she gets when she’s the only one there? When you’re waiting on filling those two other positions so that she can have some roommates to talk to again?”

“She doesn’t get any kind of way,” Erwin insists. She is always the same as far as he can tell.

“Yeah,” Mike sniffs. He slides open the balcony door, goes back inside.

Erwin, at the end of his patience, says, “If you’re so worried, then you can call her.”

But Mike won’t. It isn’t his job. And Erwin doesn’t, because he is stubborn and certain that he is right. 

One month later he’s saying goodbye to his boyfriend who has to stay another two weeks for his clients going to the horse show in Ocala. Mike is always jealous that he gets to go home early and Erwin is always jealous that he gets to stay down south longer. He follows the trailer shipping the horses, but at a slower pace. It gets there a day ahead of him, so that when he comes home, all of the horses are in their stalls, content, blanketed against the spring chill, healthy and happy. 

Erna is Erna. He sees her emptying a wheelbarrow into the manure spreader, he waves, she runs down the ramp and over to him, but when she stops in front of him, she’s looking past him, right and left and all around. And after a quick scan of the scenery, she looks up at him and asks, “Ymir and Krista didn’t come back?”

His palm goes to the back of his neck and he smiles apologetically. “They decided to stay in Florida and groom for another stable in Ocala.”

She frowns and her shoulders fall a little. He tells her he’s sorry. He’s never had to apologize for people quitting before. It feels strange. 

She says, “Oh well,” and she turns back to where she left the wheelbarrow to retrieve it and go clean more stalls. 

Erwin gets his bags and goes to the house. The first thing he does is call Mike and tell him that all of his fears were unfounded and he could not have been more wrong. He then calls the local paper and places the ad for the jobs again. His days are filled with a lot of calls, most of them attempts at sales. If he could sell or lease or breed one horse, his financial stress would be significantly reduced. 

He’s up that night, in the kitchen, looking up the current FEI rankings, crossing names off of a list of contacts, multitasking in front of a computer screen where he’s putting together an ad for one of the horses he needs to sell when he hears the turn and roar of an engine. Two headlights blink to brightness, from the left side of the gravel pad out in view of the bay window in front of his kitchen table. The farm truck that he gave Erna the keys to pulls away.

He knows he told her to only use it if she really needed to, like if she needed to go buy food or get herself to a hospital, but he wouldn’t even be mad if she was just taking it to go out and socialize. She’s earned at least that. He can’t pay her what she’s worth, so she may as well get some use out of that ancient truck.

He sleeps well, in his own bed again, finally. Comforted by home, made fonder of it by its absence. He wakes up early, optimistic, bundled in a sweatshirt against the significantly colder temperatures of Spring in New Jersey versus Florida, with a cup of black coffee, he heads out to the barn, planning on updating the list of supplements he wants the show horses getting during their break. 

First he notices that the truck isn’t in its normal spot in front of the garage across from the house. 

He goes in the side door to the washroom, connecting it with the gravel pad and the driveway. He finds Erna with her face in the utility sink, puking her guts into the drain, her elbows behind her like wings and her fingers clenched bone tight to the sides of the giant, deep basin of the sink. When she’s done, he frowns and asks, “Where’s the truck?”

Her words are slurred, spoken around drool, “Down the house.” She spits, and says, more clearly, “Sorry.”

He doesn’t know who this is. He doesn’t know who she is with her sunken, bloodshot eyes and the sneer that curls her lips before she spits yellow bile into the sink. She pushes herself up, knuckles as white as the sink they’re clamped to, and stumbles for the hook that holds the lead ropes, snatching one up without stopping, wrapping it over her shoulders as she goes into the barn to start turning out horses.

It takes her until three in the afternoon to finish work. Only two hours before she’ll need to be back in the barn to do the afternoon feeding. He decides, for today, to not do anything. He hopes with all he has that this will sort itself out. One bad day is just one, singular bad day.

That night, he watches the farm truck pull away with a cold feeling in the pit of his gut. The next morning, when she’s groaning in the middle of a stall she’s cleaning, he asks simply, “You sick?” to give her an opportunity to lie, to give himself a chance to not have to talk with her, and to give him one more day to pretend like this situation might fix itself if he does nothing. 

She keeps sifting through bedding with her pitchfork and doesn’t answer him. He cards a hand through his hair. “Take the day off. Go lie down. I’ll find someone to finish this.”

She stops sifting and smoothing and leveling stall bedding and looks up at him. With eyes narrowed to angry slits, she hisses, “I don’t need a day off.”

He sticks around and makes half assed attempts at making himself look busy while he spies her stopping every other stall she cleans to go to the spigot and gulp down water like it was being discontinued soon. She can’t hold it down, and heaves it out into the dirt of the next stall she cleans, then goes back to the spigot when that one’s done and tries to keep some water down again. This goes on for fifteen stalls before Erwin can’t stand it and he goes to the house. 

He calls Mike. He says, “I don’t want to either alarm you or give you reason to gloat, but I think you may have been right about leaving Erna alone over the winter.”

“Is she okay?”

A long pause, and then, “I don’t know.” Even though he knows the truthful answer is no. “I don’t know what the hell happened.”

Mike hums. He’s quiet long enough to make Erwin uncomfortable, then he says, “Were you checking the weather up there while you were down here?”

“No,” he answers. “Why would I?”

“You’ve never spent a winter up there,” Mike says, calmly. “Snows a lot. Easy to get snowed in. The water troughs outside get frozen with ice so thick you need to break it with a fucking mallet or a shovel. Freezing rain, single digit temperatures for days at a time, power goes out and doesn’t get turned back on for a week...” Then he asks a question that makes the hairs on Erwin’s arms prickle. “Do you know if she has family around there? Or anyone?”

He doesn’t know a fucking thing about this girl. 

He’s suddenly trying to remember any scrap of anything he knows for a fact about Erna. 

She was seventeen when she first started working there. Was that in May of last year?

He’s lucky that he’s a fastidious and organized record keeper. It takes one minute to find the carbon copy of her first paycheck. May of last year. Seventeen and looking for a job with a room and free board. Kids don’t graduate high school in early May. 

And Mike is still on the phone with him, detailing how someone as anxious as her would have been worrying about frozen water pipes bursting all winter, foals freezing to death. He paints a picture of Erna going out in the middle of the night with a flashlight to check on the pregnant mares in freezing rain. Erwin tells him to stop it. He can’t listen to this. 

Mike backpedals and tries to comfort him. He says he’ll be home in two weeks and he’ll fix it. Erwin doesn’t even know that that fucking means. How do you even begin to fix any of this?

He can’t bring himself to wait another day. To wait and see if she’s going to kill herself with that ancient truck. He goes out to where she’s still cleaning stalls at about half normal speed, leaning on the pitchfork, doing a piss poor job of actually getting them clean. He stands in the open door, behind her wheelbarrow, and asks her straight, “Do you have any family around here?”

She slowly lifts her face, palest he’s seen it yet, her lips standing out red, dehydrated and chapped against its backdrop, and with feral eyes, she spits into the dust and says, “Fuck off, Erwin.”

He walks away pissed off at her and pissed off at himself. Mostly the latter. 

He follows her, headlights turned off in the old BMW that belonged to his father that he can never bring himself to drive. He has no trouble in the midnight dark, having been literally born and bred here. He will never forget the feel of these roads, and he suspects she isn’t going far anyway. 

It is a right out of the driveway, a left, a right onto a bridge that spans the river 22 feet down, and then a left into the nearest bar. Less than a quarter of a mile. In the most unlikely place for a bar if you didn’t know about this town’s history and when the railroad left and took all the commerce in this spot with it something like a century ago. The only building still standing from when there was a bustling train station and crossroads here, is this small one and a half story structure with a potholed spot of gravel in front of it. 

She parks his truck and gets out, and he keeps driving, turning on his lights after passing the bar, turning onto another road to turn around and go back over the bridge. He can’t confront her there. He can’t bring himself to embarrass her like that.

It’s a small bar, he thinks when he passes it on the way back, just enough room for the rectangular bar counter, two tables, two booths, and a pool table, and owned by a man who doesn’t make a fuss about the bartenders serving teenagers seeing as he’s in the middle of nowhere and there isn’t much chance of getting caught doing it. He didn’t have a problem with it about thirty years ago when Erwin and Mike were teenagers either, which is what Mike points out when Erwin gets home and calls him.

He says, “It's different,” while his boyfriend tries to placate him. Mike wants to know how it's different. Erwin can't say. He just knows it is in his gut. He gets told to get some sleep and try not to worry too much.

First thing in the morning he tells Erna that he wants the keys to the truck back. She's looking over a list of horses to exercise, and she looks up, curls her lip at him like a rabid animal, and says, “Fine.”

That night he watches the light of the screen of her phone float down the road. It's a short walk to the bar. At least he doesn't have to worry about her crashing through the guard rail on that bridge. Mike calls him around ten at night and asks how he's making out. When Erwin sighs he says he'll be home in a week and everything will be fine.

He doesn't see how.

This is a bad time of year for finding new help. Riding students looking for a part time job are recovering from the WEF, going on spring break. In about two weeks he should hear from someone new. Then he can let her go. 

Mid morning she’s dragging her feet, pushing a full wheelbarrow. He's watching her from the corner of the aisle, leaning against the wall, feeling like he can barely hold himself up. He might have slept four hours altogether. 

The wheel clears the lip of the aisle and she stumbles, knocking the right handle with her thigh and cursing. The handle slips from her hand and the wheelbarrow tips, a corner of it hitting the ground and spilling manure and dust in the gravel. She lets out a spiteful, “Fuck.”

She leans over and tugs at the handles, trying to right the heavy thing. 

He tells her, “You gotta stop this,” as he pushes himself away from the wall, starting to walk over to help her. 

“Stop what?” she hisses, yanking at the load that’s too heavy for her to get upright. Erwin nears her and goes to take the handles from her grasp, but he stops up short and says, “Erna,” to get her attention. And when she looks up at him, he says, “Your skin is yellow.”

She looks at her forearm, then the underside of it, and goes, “Huh…”

He shakes his head, feeling very drawn, and tells her to go lie down. 

She keeps looking at her arm, tilting it a little this way and that, checking out her veins that look green now instead of blue, like she didn’t hear him. He repeats himself and her head snaps up and she looks at him with those eyes, red, dry, glowing like toxic yellow bile in the corners. The thought comes to him, with sudden clarity, that she looks like a sled dog that’s being approached with the knife that will cut them from the traces. Snarling.  _ Don’t take my job from me.  _ She croaks, “Don’t want to.”

He tells her again, firmer, pointing down at the farmhouse like she is a dog, “Go lie down.”

And she walks away with her tail between her legs like one too. 

  
  
Erwin takes a trip to Wawa, hollow and tense and dry of much more feeling than that now that he's spending up about all of the compassion he has in him at this moment on a $5 sandwich and a gallon of water. 

When he gets back, he pulls into the opposite end of the curved driveway, and parks on the grass near the farmhouse. She startles him when he climbs the steps and looks up to see her folded up awkwardly in that rocking chair over in the shaded corner of the porch.

His boots sound so heavy on the planks as he walks over. He tosses the sandwich rolled up in white paper into her lap. “Hope you like turkey.” He sets the gallon of water by the legs of the rocker.

She says thanks and tears at the paper enough to expose an end of the roll, and she takes a peck at it, chewing forever, and then seeming to wait… to see if it will even stay down…

He can't stop that bar from being there and he can't stop her from making the decision to walk there every night. She's her own person and all he is is her boss. All he can do is threaten to fire her.

He thinks about how different she looked three months ago, when she was happy to see him leave and convinced she was gonna have the time of her life being unbothered by people, a whole farm of horses to play with.

He stands there, leaning on the railing for support, and asks her, “What happened?”

“Just… nothin.” She takes another peck. “Nothin happened. It got cold, work's harder when it's cold, but nothing happened. It just got…”

“Lonely?”

She sighs, disgusted. “I don't know. I don't even like people… no offense.”

He nods.

“But I hadn’t heard another human’s voice in two months…”

The back of Erwin’s head touches the column he’s leaning on. 

He basically put a girl in solitary confinement.

He sags there and rubs his brow. “Where did you come from?”

Maybe he can get her on a bus home. 

There’s a twitch, between her dark eyebrows, and he wishes she weren’t so fucking perceptive, even when hungover. She husks, dark and spiteful, “South of here.”

And that’s all he’ll get. He looks away, in the direction of the steps he just walked up, and asks her, “Why didn’t you call?”

“For what? Farm was fine.”

He wants to shout. A tight feeling pulls at his ribs and he takes a big, long breath to try to unclench his chest. When it feels like his ribcage has loosened again, he says, “You weren’t.”

With the wettest voice he’s ever heard out of her, she answers, “I’m  _ fine _ .”

And she rocks forward, bends down for the water. Erwin wonders if she has even a dollar of her paycheck left for food.

When he gets back up to his own house, he almost breaks his fist, suddenly punching the door frame. 

Mike comes home early. He doesn’t go to his home - the house/pet sitter is still there and everything’s fine and looked after - but he goes straight to Erwin’s, kisses the busted knuckles and dried tears, says he’s going to fix it. 

Erwin whispers, “You can’t fix people like that.”

And Mike laughs. 

Which seems rude given the situation. 

But it’s a laugh with a dark lining that turns into a wicked grin as he tells his unofficial boyfriend of tens of years, “Not trying to fix her. She’s eighteen. She’ll bounce right back from this. Your worried mother hen thing is very cute though.”

“Then?”

“Want to go for a walk?”

Erwin doesn’t know why Mike takes him to the bar. He refuses to go inside. Mike says that it’s fine. He won’t be more than two minutes anyway. Erwin frowns at his back as he walks up the steps and inside. 

He’s fucking annoyed, and would just about get over his disgust about this place to go drag that idiot out of there, what the fuck does he need a drink for right now anyway? Here, of all places. But he doesn’t get to dwell on his feelings before there’s a crash, followed by a lot of shouting. 

And Erwin’s shoulders lose their tension and he sighs. There’s more shouting from a variety of different voices, punctuated by crescendos of thuds and bangs.

The door bursts open, and suddenly a man is deposited at his feet, forearms clamped tight over his face as he curls into a fetal position. Mike follows, sauntering slowly, casually telling Erwin, “You can describe her to him. You’re better at faces.”

He sighs and rubs his eyebrows, looking at the man writhing in pain on the ground and he tries to be mad. He tries to say, “Mike…” as if he disapproves of this, but… 

“Short girl, mess of dark brown hair and blue eyes?”

Mike descends the steps, picks the man up by the collar of his shirt. “You got that?”

The man cringes and shrinks from Mike’s touch, and squeals, “Erna?”

“That’s right. You serve her again, I’m going to come back, and it isn’t going to be pretty. Understand?”

The man agrees enthusiastically and begins apologizing up and down. Mike shakes him to shut him up and looks to Erwin. “You want anything else?”

He takes a deep breath and looks up at the dilapidated bar. Of course the bartender knew her name. She must have been here every night, because it wouldn’t have looked like a dilapidated bar in the snow and freezing rain, it would have looked like a fucking beacon. He can almost see her standing on the porch, scarf pulled down from over her face so that she could smoke a cigarette and just hear human voices again. And knowing the reputation of this place he hates to think what the cost of that was. 

So he doesn’t mind much that it’s robbery when he says, “Every dollar she spent here,” and Mike goes back inside to empty the till. 

They walk back to the farm in silence. 

Until Mike elbows Erwin who’s fingering the $400 and change in his pocket, and he says, “Told you I’d fix it.”

Erna tries to go to the bar that night. Erwin watches her walk down the road. Ten minutes later he watches her walk back. 

He goes down there with a glass and a bottle and no apologies. He gives her a shot, because if she just stops cold turkey after a month of heavy drinking every night, she might have a seizure. She licks it off of her lips after she swallows it, and then drawls, “They said I’m banned.”

He gets ready to lie to her when she looks up at his face. She tilts her head and narrows her eyes like she’s trying to read his reaction. 

But he’s quick. He says, “Do you wanna go ride some horses tomorrow?”

She blinks, broken from her scrutiny of his guilty face. “Huh?”

“I was gonna go look at some horses for sale.”

She eyes him suspiciously, and asks, “You got the money to buy a horse?”

“Nope, but they’re over at Nile Dok’s place.”

“If you can’t buy any, why would we…”

“To fuck with him.”

She tilts her head like she isn’t sure of what he just said, and then she just laughs. 

Erwin hopes Mike’s right and teenagers these days are as resilient as he thinks, because in the morning she still doesn’t look great. She doesn’t look like a rabid cat, but she doesn’t look great. He helps her with the barn chores this time and she lets him, as long as he stays very far out of her way, and they finish early so that he can take her to ride some of Nile’s horses that just started training. 

She whistles when they pull into the driveway. Erwin grunts, “Yeah, I know.”

It’s a nice place. Two outdoor riding rings, a huge indoor ring with a viewing room and a sprinkler system and special footing to keep dust down, paddocks with freshly painted fences, bustling activity, trainers and students wearing expensive brands of riding clothes while leading horses wearing the most expensive tack. He was almost worried about bringing her here. He was worried she’d be self conscious about her old, worn half chaps and paddock boots that have seen better days, but she stands as confident as she would be on his own farm, not a lick of self consciousness about herself. 

Nile greets them in the parking lot and asks, “You going to leave with anything this time?” eyeing the trailer attached to Erwin’s truck. 

Erwin shrugs. “Maybe.” 

Nile takes in Erna, gives Erwin a puzzled, sort of disgusted look, and curls his lip. Erwin hurries to say, “Brought someone to ride them this time.”

“I have students who…”

Erwin placates him quickly, “Don’t worry, she can keep her heels down.”

Erna smirks. Erwin claps his hand on Nile’s shoulder, gently directing him toward the main barn. He tells Erna to go ahead and look around while they talk horses, which makes Nile stiffen as he is forced in the other direction. 

Without hesitation, Erna walks straight to the nearest fenced in riding arena where a trainer is teaching a private lesson to a horse and rider. She leans on the fence and watches, completely entranced. Her toes curl up and press at the stiff leather of her boot as muscle memory makes her twitch as she follows along with the flow of the horse’s canter, her chin nodding in time with every stride. She unconsciously leans forward when the rider should be two pointing. They do not. The horse jumps and leaves them behind and they almost fall off. Erna smirks to herself and rests her chin and arms on the top fence rail. It smells like fresh wood. She’d kill for a wooden fence like this at Erwin’s farm. Nile and Erwin catch her taking a deep breath of it when one of Nile’s stablehands brings out a horse all groomed and tacked up. 

Nile gives Erwin a look as Erna walks over to the mounting block to get up on the sixteen hand tall chestnut Selle Francais gelding that he imported from Amsterdam to train and resell. Erwin smiles good naturedly, as if he doesn’t notice his friend’s reservations, and he asks, “Is it okay if we hop in this ring?” and he gestures to the ring where a private lesson is still going on.

Nile scowls and narrows his eyes at the girl up on his ninety-thousand dollar horse. “Does she know her ring manners?”

Erwin looks at Erna for an answer, because he has no idea what she knows. He only knows she’s a good rider. She rolls her eyes and recites, “Pass left to left shoulder, call out behind, call your fences. Anything else?”

Nile gives the stablehand who brought the horse out a nod and they go open the gate to the riding ring. Erna smiles and thanks them as she walks the horse in. 

Erwin knows now that he assumed too much. Without knowing anything, he’d painted a picture of an Erna who grew up riding in backyards, bareback, on cheap horses with knotted manes, trying out stupid stunts like jumping pasture fences. She gave him that vibe, because she was tired and hungry and never had a dollar to her name or, apparently, even a family to fall back on. But she taps that horse’s sides like a show jumper wearing spurs and she collects him into a frame, making him curl his neck and use his hindquarters to power his stride. She moves around the ring perfectly, changing leads, going up and down through transitions, eyes up and tracking the movement of other horse and rider, never letting them get in her space while she bends the horse one way and another as she rides for minutes.

They don’t teach that in backyards. 

She stops from a canter, sitting back and pulling abruptly on her reins, making her horse nearly sit itself down at the fence where Erwin and Nile are standing silently. She asks, “Can we take some jumps?”

Erwin answers quickly, “That’s why we’re here.”

Erna looks up and directly at a white and orange striped vertical she’s had her eye on every pass, and she urges the horse into a collected canter from his standstill. 

“She better not ruin this horse,” Nile hisses at him.

He shushes him. 

The gelding’s hooves get louder as it gets its eye on the jump and Erna opens up her shoulders, leaning back, picking his head up to set him up for it. Erwin can see her lips move, almost like kissing the air, three strides out, and then over, reaching for the horse’s crest, weight off of its back and balanced. On the descent she starts to lean back in her stirrups and she absorbs the landing with her knees and ankles. She leans forward a little once on the ground again, and her head whips to the right, almost all the way over her shoulder to look at a line of blue jumps near the outside rail. 

She moves the horse over two four foot tall jumps five strides apart like it’s nothing. Erwin’s eyes widen. He didn’t even know that she could jump. He figured she knew how, but not… like that.

She bends the horse - now excited by the chance to run, and pulling at the bit - to the center of the ring, aiming for a big, intimidating jump made to look like a stone wall between two wishing wells. She has to yank back and forth on the bit to get the horse’s attention. Its head snaps up and Erwin sees the whites of his eyes and his heart rises right to his throat. Where her legs were clamped tight to the horse’s sides, Erna raises her calves off of the horse simultaneously, and brings them down hard in a loud kick to its sides, making a growling noise, audible from the fence rail, that sounds to Erwin like a feral, “Get up.”

And the horse, who had been balking at the enormity of the wall in front of it, decides that Erna is more scary than the jump, and it takes off, back legs kicking out on the descent. When it lands, she leans over its neck, not set off balance at all as it gallops off, and she gives her mount big pats on his neck for being a gentleman about cooperating. 

She brings him back lathered in sweat, and says, “He’s alright. Kind of timid, if you were wondering why he charges the jumps. Could use some confidence.”

Nile’s lower jaw looks disconnected. 

The trainer who had been standing in the center of the ring with her student jogs over. She waves to Erwin, who she’s met before, gestures to Erna, and asks, “Can I borrow her for a second?”

He shrugs. The blonde woman looks up at Erna and asks, “You want to hop on another horse?”

“Always.”

Erwin watches the mute pantomime as the woman leads Erna over to her student’s horse and shouts at the kid to dismount. He can see them chattering the whole walk over there. Without missing a beat, Erna grabs the saddle and bends her knee for a leg up, which the blonde offers without difficulty. 

She schools the kid’s horse. Apparently it didn’t like to pick up its left lead. Erna has it fixed in half an hour, well enough that the kid can get on his own horse and replicate her results. Nile asks Erwin if she teaches, (suspicious that he’s trying to start up a competing lesson program) and Erwin just shrugs because he likes for Nile to worry. Erna either picks up on that or she has her own sadistic streak toward her boss’s frenemy, because she walks back over to the fence, hands on her jean-clad hips, and asks as if she is a wealthy, professional equestrian, “Do you have any mares around seven years old? Warmblood? Bay?”

Nile’s face does a lot of things before settling on begrudging acceptance. He turns to go to the barn and says he’ll be right back. 

Erna smiles big at Erwin and says, “I’ve never bought a horse before.”

He has to smile too, but he also feels his brows crease just a little. “Didn’t know you could jump like that.”

“Because you never let me jump the horses.”

“Why don’t you compete?”

Her face falls. That isn’t the right word, he thinks. It shatters. She looks suddenly like she’ll cry and he’s left wondering what the fuck just happened.

Nile comes out with a young, bay Warmblood mare, but Erna just looks toward the truck and says, “Let’s go.”

“What?”

“I wanna  _ go _ .”

She starts for the truck and Erwin looks back to Nile apologetically, who holds his arms out. Erwin calls after her as he starts to follow, “What’s wrong?”

She stops suddenly, turns around, nods at the horse Nile is still holding, and says, “It’s hocks are too short. Legs will never last. This is bullshit anyway,” and spins just as quickly on her heel again, walking fast for the passenger side of the truck. 

He shouts, “Thanks anyway, Nile,” as they pull out. Then rolls up the window, and asks, “What the hell was that all about?”

“Nothing.”

“Where did you learn to ride like that?”

“Nowhere.”

“Goddamnit, Erna.”

She clams up. Lips sewn shut and arms crossed in front of her. It isn’t the first time Erwin feels like everything he touches turns to shit.

Erna has only been good for him and for this place and he never bothered to try to learn a fucking thing about her, and through that carelessness he abandoned her on a hundred acre farm in the middle of winter and apparently fucking broke her. He drops her off at her house and is already pulling out his cell phone as he drives up to his own, calling Mike to ask if he’s actually the fucking worst, but he notices a new email notification and taps that instead. 

He tries to answer the request for the open stablehand position while he’s still driving and almost hits a fence. Yes. He checks the name, makes sure it’s feminine, Yes. They can start tomorrow. They’ll bring their things to move in. Hours later he gets a call from the student at Niles’. The one who had trouble with their horse. They ask if they can work a few days a week, too, and exercise horses with Erna and maybe learn some things. 

In the morning, Erna has two new hires to train. They keep her busy enough that she doesn’t have time to think about drinking. Nile calls him at ten in the morning, pissing and moaning about him stealing one of his students. 

“Nile, I didn’t steal anyone?”

“Annie said -”

“Marlo’s only working here in the mornings. It’s barn chores. He hacks a horse, and that’s it. He’s not paying for riding lessons.” Though, as Erwin says it, he wonders if it wouldn’t be a bad idea to see if Erna wants to try teaching… A lesson program would be extra revenue.

Nile growls just before hanging up. 

In the evening, Erwin sits at the table with a cup of decaf coffee and researches the cost of the insurance he would need to buy to start a lesson program. Too much. He wonders if he could get away with it without the insurance. His phone buzzes with a new email. He’s expecting another inquiry about the ad in the paper he hasn’t pulled yet. He needs to get around to that. 

He doesn’t notice the address it’s sent from until he’s half through the message he’s just received with the most respected authority on show jumping in the country, a famous and familiar name that he’s read and heard thousands of times. It’s a polite, to the point message to request to come look at some of the horses he’s selling.

He calls Nile. When Marie puts him on the phone, Erwin asks, “Did you talk to Jim Willis?”

“ _ Hmph _ . Only to tell him that you’re out here stepping on my toes with that little barn brat you brought here yesterday. What the fuck  _ was _ that?”

“I just got a message from him to say that he wants to look at my horses.”

There’s a loud noise on the other end. Nile shouts something that’s muffled. 

Erwin thinks that Erna will be ecstatic when he tells her, but she acts nonplussed upon being confronted with the fact that the biggest name in show jumping in possibly the world wants to come to this farm and look at her horses. He knows she thinks of them that way. She shrugs at him and says, “Oh. Okay.”

Erwin tilts his head at her. “Have you not heard of Jim Willis?”

“I’ve heard of him.”

“This is a big deal.”

She looks back to the white board on the wall, checking which horses have been turned out to the paddocks for fresh air already, and clucks her tongue, then says, “Sure.”

“This could save this farm,” he says, almost pleading for her to show some excitement. 

“I hope it does,” she says as if she’s angry. She draws a line through a name on the board and grabs up the lead rope she set down, then quickly walks away to start or finish some job. 

He follows her and informs her, “He’ll be here tomorrow. I want this place looking its best.”

There’s a noise like she just choked on something. She spins around, wild-eyed, and says, “Tomorrow?”

“Yes?” he says, confused, about why that’s so alarming.

She composes herself again and says, “I’m taking my day off tomorrow,” as if she just thought of it. 

“You can’t,” Erwin insists, quickly following after her as she goes outside to get a horse from the left paddock. “I need you to ride.”

“You’ll have the other two,” she says, referring to the new hires, Marlo and Gretchen. 

“They’re not… They can barely handle the show horses…”

“Well I can’t!” she shouts at him, angrily, from the gate of the paddock, unclipping the chain that holds it shut. 

“What the hell do you have to do that’s so important?” he asks, completely livid. 

“None of your fucking business,” she hisses at him vehemently, and he takes a step back, because it isn’t. She’s right. When the horse comes to the gate and doesn’t offer its head right away for her to clip the lead rope to the halter, she grabs at it, rough and violent, and yanks it by the nose of its halter, dragging it for a few steps before getting the rope attached and pulling it after her to the barn. 

“Erna,” he shouts, when he catches up with her, “Whatever it is, could it wait?”

She slides the stall door closed after getting the horse’s halter off, and she lets out a big sigh while she turns her hip to look at him. 

“Please.”

She bites her lip. 

“I don’t know if I can sell these horses if you don’t ride them.”

Her fist hits the stall door with a crack. She shakes her fingers out with her face twisted in pain. 

“Erna…”   
  


“I’ll  _ try _ .” 

“Thank you.”

“Don’t count on me for anything,” she mutters as she goes to put the lead rope back in the washroom. 

  
  


Erwin can't sleep and gets to listen to his alarm go off with his eyes wide open. He's in the barn at six in the morning, organizing things, cleaning, he half thought Erna would already be there, even though she doesn't officially start for another hour. 

Then, an hour later, when Marlo and Gretchen walk up the path between the three paddocks, the best shortcut between the farmhouse and the barn, he asks them, “Where is she?”

They look nervously at each other, their lips sealed in straight lines. Finally, Gretchen says, “She said she might come up later.”

He grunts. “Go feed the horses,” and he's already pulling his phone out, texting her, “I don't care if you don't want to do chores, but I need you to ride at ten.”

There's no response. At 9:30am he bites back a growl and asks Marlo to go and get her. 

The boy comes back less than ten minutes later and tells him she's sick.

Erwin kicks a five gallon water bucket across the barn before he goes down the worn path to the little white house and shoulders the front door open. He pounds on her bedroom door, first one just inside the doorway, to the left of the steps that lead upstairs. The only answer is an eerie stillness. He tries the handle expecting it to be locked, but it turns easily in his hand. 

Upon opening her bedroom door, Erwin’s hit with a horrendous smell like stale booze, moldy sweat, and death. She's there on a mattress on the floor, tangled up in a blanket wearing a pair of boxers too big to be her own and a sports bra. He slams the door and roars, “What the hell is wrong with you?”

She's too far gone to even be startled. She opens one eye, curls her lip at him, mumbles something, and buries her head back in her pillow. 

“Get up. Are you drunk?”

“I’m na’ work’nnn,” she slurs. 

He drags her out of bed by her skinny little ankle, and she lands on the floor kicking and screaming like a banshee, “Get offa me!”

“Jesus Christ,” he mutters under his breath. He checks his phone and tells her, “I don't have time for this.”

The screen door falls off one of its hinges when he leaves. How the hell she even got alcohol, he doesn't know. Maybe one of her new roommates. Suffice to say he isn't in the mood he'd hoped to be when the most important man in the recent history of riding shows up in his driveway.

The older man shakes his hand warmly and tells him he looks so much like his father. Erwin does his best to hide his stress and to make it look like he has a handle on this farm. He turns on the charm while they make small talk and industry talk and look around the place. Jim appraises the barn with a sweeping look and tells him this place hasn't changed a bit. Erwin’s mother took lessons with Jim when Erwin was only a small boy. He remembers that she was polishing her equitation, not for competition anymore but as a point of pride, back when there was so much money flowing through this place that it was more than reasonable to call the coach of the country’s international equestrian team over for some quick tips on hand and leg position. 

Erwin asks him about what kind of horse he's looking for and he dismissively answers in his aged and gruff husk of a voice, “Just lookin’. I'll know when I see it.” 

Erwin tells Gretchen to go get a tall, grey gelding that he’s been thinking about all night, easily picked as a horse that might catch the man's interest given the types of animals he seems to like to coach his riders on. When he tells her to get him lunged and ready to free jump, Jim asks him if he has any riders. 

“Not today, unfortunately.”

“Nile said you're starting up a program with a little girl whose got good form.”

“Don't know if I'd call her a little girl to her face.” He frowns, thinking of the pile of girl twisted up in her sweat-soaked sheets wearing a pair of someone else's boxers. “Anyway, she's sick, I'm sorry.”

“Would have loved to see her go. Don't think I'll get a feel for the horses without seeing a rider on them.” 

“I'm truly sorry. Do you want me to call her?”

“Ah don't bother the girl.”

Erwin’s molars grind together the whole time they stand and watch horses, in between his words. They talk a little about each animal, but Erwin feels like he's lost Jim already. He's relieved when the man says, “Well, when do you think your rider will be well again?”

“Tomorrow at the latest,” he says eagerly and then clears his throat and adds, “just a 24 hour stomach bug,” so as to not seem strange.

He smiles big and says, “I'll come back on Friday then. I want to see that bay thoroughbred - the tall one - over one of those outdoor courses. What did you price him at again?”

“Four hundred and fifty thousand.”

“Fair, fair,” the older man nods, deep lines furrowing the skin of his face. 

Erwin walks him to the car and shakes his hand again. He watches it slowly descend the gravel driveway and wonders what the fuck he’s going to do.

Confronting Erna is pointless. He's learned at least that by now. Instead he stands outside the stall that Marlo is cleaning, and asks him, “What happened?”

Marlo looks up with panic already visible behind his expression. Erwin chose to ask him and not Gretchen because, of the two, he seems easier to crack. He tries to say, “I don't…” but he's too honest to even finish saying the lie. “She went out and came home in the morning. That's all I know.”

“How?”

“Don't know. Some guy picked her up,” Marlo answers, visibly uncomfortable and shrinking into himself. 

Erwin feels rage well up in him. Putting his farm, his fucking livelihood on the line because some guy. What happened to the girl who stood in this fucking stall and cried because she didn't want to be around men that much? He could have sold a horse if she were riding them.

But that's the thing. Only if she were riding them. 

So he goes to his own house and leaves her be with her hangover. He's got two days to figure out how to fix this now. Not that he could with a millennia. 

She’s at his door at 6pm. She chooses the blue-painted side door to the kitchen, instead of the formal entryway that faces the road. She’s freshly showered and dressed in a pair of shorts that hang off her now visible hip bones that are bruising the skin stretched over them, and a t-shirt that’s got little holes torn out of the hem by that ancient washing machine in the farmhouse. 

She says, “I’m sorry.”

He didn’t even expect an apology. He wanted one, because the context of the whole situation, the events of the past week, make him feel like he’s owed something more than he is. In the time he had to brood before she came up there, he realized when logic returned that she only owes him five hours of work a day, six days a week and she already gives him more than that.

But he’ll take the apology with a nod. She keeps standing there like she doesn’t know what to do, like she’s waiting for something. He wonders why she doesn’t just go back down to the farmhouse, until she asks, “Am I fired?”

“I’d tell ya if you were fired,” he answers. He gives her a hard look. “You enjoy your day off?”

And he realizes that was unnecessarily mean when she blushes and hangs her head, her palm going to the corner of her jaw as her other hugs around herself. He feels a pang of regret, and he sighs. He steps to the side of the kitchen entrance and says, “Come on in.”

She looks inside, and around, and at him suspiciously, like this is a trick, but she finally kicks the toes of her boots against the step and comes in. Erwin glides to the counter, bends for a cabinet underneath, and his fingers skim out a bottle of Jack Daniels, remembering exactly where it is on which shelf. “If you have to drink,” he says, grabbing two rocks glasses, “I’d rather you did it at home where you’re safe.”

He fills his to the brim with whiskey. Hers is mostly water for her dried out veins and arteries. He leads her across the house, through the formal dining room, past the foyer and living room, to a screened in porch facing the north end of the farm and the field that the pregnant mares graze in. They take up old, faded and cracking patio armchairs set facing out at the view with a little table between them. 

After minutes of silence, she says, “This is a lot more relaxing than watching the foals.”

He hums. “I always thought this was the better view,” he answers, referring to her own view from her own house on the opposite end of the farm where the weaned yearlings are always playing, racing each other, trying to unlock the gate and escape. Then he gestures to the bottle of cheap whiskey between them, now that she’s vocal, and says, “If I need to keep a bottle of this on hand for when you need to talk, I will, as long as it keeps you out of trouble.”

She tilts her head slightly toward him and there’s a flicker of a smile. The first cicaidas of the season drone outside, their noise rising and falling. Her thumb presses and slides over the condensation at the bottom of her glass, eyelashes covering her eyes, she says, “You’re not much fun to talk to.”

He laughs and she exhales slightly, glad that he took that well. 

They go minutes in silence. After five of those minutes, she takes it upon herself to go back to the kitchen for more water, comes back, tops herself off with a finger of whiskey, and sits down again. After a sip, she says, “Your water is better.”

“Same well,” he says. 

But they both know the pipes are different. The quality of the fucking fixtures and the trap is different. That farmhouse at the bottom of the hill is about a hundred years old and it’s solid, but not much care has gone into the maintenance of it. Hasn’t ever seemed to bother anyone who’s lived there, but then again, hardly anyone has ever lived there for over a year. 

Tense, she asks, “You sell any horses?” with a cracking voice. 

He thinks she’s embarrassed about this morning. He imagines she feels like she let him down. Let her horses down. So he tells her, “No, but he’s interested enough to come back on Friday.”

“I won’t be here,” she says quickly, but with zero feeling. 

“Erna,” he says, rising frustration making his voice tight. 

“I’ll quit if I have to. I can be moved out in an hour.”

He knows she can. She had just about five possessions in that bedroom and three of them were her helmet, boots, and chaps. 

“I don’t understand what’s got you so bent out of shape.”

“I won’t ride for that…”

“Fine. Quit then. Go the hell home,” he says, because he’s pissed off and he’s sure that would be better for her, wherever the hell home is. He’ll tell Jim Willis to wait a week, and he’ll ask Petra to ride the horses for him when she’s back from the horse show in Ocala. 

She looks so hurt, but he doesn’t care. Sometimes you have to hurt to help. And he’s choosing to help, finally, and stop being so fucking selfish… stop trying to think of ways he can keep her here. 

“He. Raped. Me.”

Her lips form the words so slowly, so carefully annunciated, not to be misunderstood.

So that he cannot ask her ‘What?’

Though he does. 

And because she knows there was no mis-hearing that, she does not repeat herself. She tells him, “I was fourteen.”

Something like Erwin’s life flashes before his eyes. Only the really relevant parts. Mostly it replays every interaction. Every hint. Every creepy feeling. Mostly the projection screen flickers with the promise that he could save his business and be wealthy again if he offered up this broken girl to her rapist, because he believes her immediately. 

Jim Willis could make him famous. He would never have to feel the shame of a bounced check again. He could lease out and sell all of the horses in the barn and have the money to breed more. He could make this farm run the way it’s meant to. 

And just thinking about that makes his body rebel and go at odds with his brain, flooding his gut with a wave of nausea and his chest with a tight, petrified feeling. 

Erna is just about expressionless, her face drawn and still, but her eyes well up with tears. Her lips part to suck in air, and she exhales out her nose with a high-pitched sighing sound, breathes that way again, louder, wetter, until it’s sobbing, 

He’s not above crying when he gets on his knees to hug her and tell her he’s so fucking sorry. 


	4. chapter three

“You tired of this yet,” Erwin asks Erna one day, and she knows exactly what he means even though they are not mid-conversation. He’s just come out and caught her emptying a wheelbarrow over the side of the manure spreader and now she’s using all her weight to pull it back up and over, an awkward job for someone who is about as tall as the wheelbarrow when you stand it on its end. 

But she stubbornly says, “Nope,” while he watches her struggle.

He’s talking about her doing all of the barn chores by herself. Again. Ever since he finished the show season in Florida and came back without grooms… again… 

There have been good years and bad years of the past five that she’s been working for him. This was the worst. And when the horses came back from the WEF early, because his latest rider, a student from one of the successful trainers in upstate New York, got thrown and quit before the end of the show, Erna was pissed off. 

It wasn’t helpful that the shippers arrived at four in the morning and she was the only person here to handle the care of nine horses in danger of going into shock from the sudden cold.

Erwin got an earful about it. Well, not about what happened. It was a more personal rant about how they can’t keep any fucking help because he doesn’t pay enough and how the farm is falling apart because he’s cheap as fuck. 

He’d love to spend money if he had it. 

“I appreciate you saving me the money of hiring two other stablehands --”

“Not doin’ it for that.”

He keeps on with what he was saying, “But Princeton is coming up in about--”

“Six weeks.”

“... Yeah,” he says, waiting to see if she will fill in the underlying point for him as well. She wheels the wheelbarrow down the ramp, stops, and stares at him, like she doesn’t know what the point even is. He tells her, “I need a show groom.”

“Yeah, I’ll get one,” she huffs, and is quick to point out, to turn it back on him, “You need a rider or a show groom isn’t gonna have shit to do.”

“Six weeks isn’t a long time to train someone.”

“Please,” she says derisively, “They have to know how to hold a lead rope and muck a stall. It’s whatever.”

“And change shoe studs, and time turnout, and clean tack, and administer meds --”

She cuts him off again, “Yeah, I know. I got it. I’ll do it. Fuck. Christ.” She keeps muttering to herself as she stalks off toward the barn, wheelbarrow bouncing on the uneven gravel. “Prick.”

“I heard that!”

“Good!”

“Watch your mouth!” Erwin warns her, frowning deeply. She disappears into the dark, cool shade of the barn, and he shakes his head. She’s twenty-two now. He thinks she should behave more like an adult at work. 

Erna finishes her last few chores and walks down to the house. She knows life would be easier with coworkers, but coworkers means roommates, and she’d really enjoyed the chance to live alone again for the first time in a long time.

She is very good at being a roommate. She is quiet, respectful of common areas, keeps her shit in her room, washes her dishes, takes cold five minute long showers, and never steals food. 

But when she’s living alone? She gets very relaxed about cleaning. 

So she is waiting on her third load of laundry when she finally gets around to opening the ancient laptop that Erwin gave her, expressly so that she could do this one job of hiring new stablehands whenever the need for them arises. She types her password and opens the email that’s listed at the bottom of the ad that she posts every time someone quits. Lately she barely even bothers to take it down.

The washing machine hits the rinse cycle and sputters and shuts itself off. Erna shoots up from her chair, takes three steps over to it, slaps the dial to start it again, and seats herself back at the kitchen table. 

She narrows her eyes at the list of identical subject lines from people who applied directly through the website. Her eyes scan quickly for one that doesn’t match - someone who put in one more ounce of effort. Maybe they wrote the email address down to send their application later, or clicked away from the ad to research the farm before applying. Looking for someone slightly more curious and intelligent than your average fuckstick. 

She finally finds one halfway down that says, in lowercase letters (applied from their phone, she thinks) ‘stablehand job’.

The email gets opened, but it doesn’t get read. Not exactly. Erna looks to the bottom of the paragraphs of text for a name. Eren. Which she thinks is a funny way to spell Erin. She hits reply, and says what she always says. “The job is still open. If you come to the barn at 7am tomorrow, you can work until noon and get paid for a day of work. If you still want the job at the end of the day, it’s yours.”

This is her system. There is very little training, and she'll take literally anyone who still wants to do this shitty fucking work after having survived a day of it. 

The next morning, when a slim, athletic, tan as fuck, brown-haired boy gets out of the turquoise sedan that pulls up, she realizes that Eren is actually a really stupid way to spell Aaron and she is so mad at herself for not calling and doing a quick phone interview to confirm that she was getting the female roommate she wanted. 

When two other kids also get out of the car, she wonders if she really should have read that fucking email, because this is highly irregular. They start walking over to where she’s standing, the sole person here, waiting at the side door to the washroom. There’s one girl, so maybe she wasn’t wrong about Eren being a girl’s name. And another boy, but blonde and tall and definitely not a rider. The brunette might be. She can’t decide. 

“Is one of you Eren?”

“Oh, hi, me,” the tan one smiles and extends his hand. “Are you Erna?”

“Mhm.” She takes his hand, shakes it quickly, then takes in all three of them and says, “There’s only two jobs.”

“I know.. I.. Did you read my email…?”

“I didn’t, and I’m not going to, and it’s 6:59 and I have to feed these horses, but as long as you understand that there is only seventy-four dollars to split between you, we’ll be able to settle up at the end of the day.”

They all agree that that is fine and Erna shrugs. This has never happened. She is cautiously optimistic that she’ll actually be able to get some shit done today with all this extra help. 

They follow her into the main barn where she gestures down the wide cement aisle separating the two long lines of stalls, each with a small covered bucket outside of it, and she tells them, “Breakfast is already made up, you just have to dump those buckets of grain into their feed buckets.” As they each move in a different direction to different stalls, she points to the third one down on the right and says, “That door sticks, it might take two of you.”

The girl goes straight to the stall she just pointed out and opens the door that makes her hurt her shoulder every fucking day like it is mounted on water. Erna watches her close it without straining, her eyebrows raised. Calmly, without any affect, the girl moves on to the next stall, and Erna walks over to spot she just vacated. She opens the lock and goes to pull the door open again, and it doesn’t fucking budge, just like it hasn’t ever since it’s been knocked off the fucking rollers and she hasn’t had a chance to fix it. 

So Erna follows the strong girl. 

She talks through the bars of the stall while she’s delivering grain to another nickering horse’s feed bucket. “What’s your name?”

“Mikasa,” she says, shyly, with a little upward inflection. 

“Do you know how to put on a pair of splint boots?”

She looks up, her lips parted a little, with embarrassed confusion. “I don't know what a splint boot is.”

“Fuck,” Erna mutters under her breath.

She walks straight past the blond one. He doesn’t look like a horse person. She shouts as she gets closer to where the tan one is just exiting a stall after patting a horse on the neck, “Hey, Eren. Do you know how to put on a pair of splint boots?”

“Yeah!” he says enthusiastically, with a big smile. 

The corner of Erna’s mouth tenses and draws back as she looks at Erwin’s future show groom. She hopes he isn’t a complete tool like the last one. 

She goes back to about the middle of the barn to check on the blond one, just to learn that his name is Armin, just to be able to shout it if he’s about to get kicked in the head. Then she takes them all back to the washroom to explain some things while the horses eat. 

She points at the whiteboard hanging on the wall next to the door, over the washing machine that she sometimes uses as an impromptu desk or chair or both at the same time. She tells the trio standing there how the system works. Ten to fifteen minutes of ‘turnout’ for every horse in the barn, in one of those three paddocks just outside, marked on this board as ‘right, left, and back,’ and they might all get some fresh air before quitting time. As you turn horses out, you mark it down here on the whiteboard. You try to get everything else done, aka feeding, cleaning stalls, water buckets, feeding more, sweeping, etc. etc. all while stopping whatever you are doing about every ten to fifteen minutes to go switch turnout. “As long as you pay attention to what horse you're taking and you put them back in the right stall, it is pretty much impossible to fuck up.” 

She points to the column where some horses names have a red X marked. “These are stallions. You do not put them out in the paddocks when mares are out, and you especially don't put them outside when another stallion is out.” She waits to see them all nod. She does not rush that point. She needs it to be clear, because a fight between two stallions is terrifying, even to her, and she's seen literally everything. “The horses on this list,” she holds up a slip of yellow note paper still laying on the washing machine from yesterday, “are to be worked, so you do not turn them out unless we have extra time at the end of the day. They don’t need it like the other horses will.”

Eren nods along as if he understands at least a little. The other two look like they need her to define and explain a lot more of those words. Erna promises herself right now that if a horse gets loose today, she is waiting one more month before trying to hire people again. She deserves some peace.

“There are only two rules,” she tells them. She points over to the radio sitting atop some shelving that’s piled with clean saddle pads and half pads. “Do not change the station on that radio ever.” The ancient radio is currently droning out the BBC News Hour, because she keeps it set to the local NPR station. Always. “And,” and here she makes quotation marks with her fingers, “Don’t do what Erna does.”

Before they can ask, she rolls into, “Which means, that I am going to train you today, and I am going to tell you what to do, but you are not to try to follow by my example in general, because I do a lot of unsafe and unadvisable shit that I get to do because I have sixteen years of experience.” 

She points at the well worn, but still bright magenta Vans on her feet, and says, “For example…” because anyone but her should be wearing boots around a horse barn. She’s so quick on her feet that she’d fall down dead from shock if a horse successfully stepped on her. Then her eyes flick to Eren’s boots, a nice, clean pair of Dehners in brown leather. They’re nice, expensive riding boots. Maybe nicer than her own Ariats. She goes, “You want to work in those?” 

“Oh, um, they’re my only boots,” he says, and that starts to paint a picture for her of exactly what this kid’s background with horses is. She feels some apprehension. Someone who’s worked with horses rather than simply ridden them, would have a pair of work boots. She asks Armin and Mikasa to go gather up all of the emptied grain buckets and bring them to the feed room. She points it out for them, across the aisle from the washroom, before she nods at Eren to follow her. She takes him to the nearest stall. It doesn’t matter which one. Doesn’t need to be a particular horse. 

She grabs up the splint boots hanging on the metal bar across the front of the stall door, and hands them to him. She opens the stall door for him, and asks, “Could you put those on and bring this horse out to the back paddock?”

She cringes as he puts them on backwards, pulling the velcro closures tight toward the front of the horses leg. Erna has to stop him and correct him. She tells him why they go on the way they do, gives him the quickest lesson in horse legs and blood circulation, and then lets him clip a lead rope to the horse’s halter and bring it outside. She stands in the doorway of the barn and whispers, “Fuck,” in quiet, resigned awe. When he comes back, having successfully led a horse to it's paddock for, presumably, the first time in his life, Erna goes, “I forgot to tell you to leave that,” pointing at the red leadrope in his right hand. 

He quickly stops and turns to go back and leave it at the paddock, but Erna goes, “No, that's my fault, give me that.” She reaches for the lead as he comes back to her, takes it up in her hand and hooks it over her shoulders for easy carrying, closure hanging around her right hand, rope wrapped around her neck, and knotted end hanging around her left hand as she walks him over to the feed room. Without breaking stride through the open doorway, she points at the whiteboard in this room and chirps, “that's what the horses eat, measuring scoops are somewhere in one of these,” she takes the lid off of a metal trash bin containing a bag of expensive grain and picks out a plastic measuring scoop. She uses it to point at a shelf of bottles and cylinder containers of pellets and powders and various pills. “Those are the supplements. Do not fuck them up.”

She picks up a grain bucket, labeled with a name on cheap blue painters tape on the side and gets to work, because she can finish this is 6 minutes by herself or watch them struggle to match name to name and level scoops carefully for half an hour. As she goes from one bag of grain to another, a half scoop here and there, she asks, “Where are you from?”

One of them answers for all, “Bucks County?”

As if she might not have heard of it, all of one state over. “Lot of horses over there,” she says, as she stabs her scoop into the large, tarp-covered wheelbarrow underneath of the chute for the bare, cheap grain pellets Erwin buys for a bulk discount from a local feed store. She adds, muttering, “Lot of mansions, too.”

One of them nods, one of them blushes, and one looks a little indignant.  _ And a lot of trainers who’ll take your money and teach you to jump a horse but not to handle one,  _ she thinks and keeps it to herself, because she isn’t that rude. “Any of you ride?”

Eren raises his fucking hand. “I’ve been riding since…”

His voice goes to static inside her head, because she doesn’t fucking care and is an expert selective listener. She interrupts his little bio, and asks, “Where at?”

“Oh, um, with Keith Shadis, at…” 

He goes to static again. She knows the name of the farm he’s talking about. She knows every fucking horse farm in the tri-state area and some beyond. And she knows that Keith Shadis is a bitter old man who gave up on actually teaching anything a long fucking time ago, which is why she stops to rub her temples and wish that she had a bullet to put between her eyes. 

“Do we get to ride the horses or…?”

Erna sucks at her teeth and winces. “I doubt it…” She slaps a cover on the bucket she’s finished with and grabs a new one. “Do you know anything about horse shows?”

“I’ve been to shows!” he says brightly.

“As a groom?” she asks hopefully, thinking maybe he does know some things. Maybe he’s self taught. 

“Oh, no, but I competed in low schooling hunter.”

Good, she thinks, a rich brat who’s never had to tack up a horse. Perfect. It’s not even starting from scratch, it’s starting from a different discipline and breaking old habits and teaching new ones. She sighs, and then asks, with her last shred of hope, “Have you always ridden with Shadis? You learned everything from him?”

“Um, yeah, is that…?”

“Just wondering.” She stacks the six buckets she’s finished while the blond one is just finishing his first, being, apparently, the best among the three at numbers and charts and fractions, because Eren hasn’t even started to measure grain, and Mikasa is looking at the bucket in her hand and then to the whiteboard like she just forgot if she put a ⅓ scoop of the Cavalor in it or a ½ scoop of Triple Crown. 

Armin’s tall and young looking with bright blue eyes, but when he was feeding the horses she could already tell he isn’t familiar with large animals with the way he timidly and gently begged them to get out of the way so that he could reach their feed buckets, so she nods at him and asks, “What’s your deal?”

He’s absorbed in measuring out cc’s of an expensive liquid supplement for horses with sensitive stomachs and doesn’t realize she’s talking to him until Mikasa says his name and gets his attention. Erna asks him again, and he says, “Oh, um, I’m a vet student… Or, I’m trying to be one?”

Erna’s head tilts back and she takes a big, deep breath, then smacks her forehead and says, “Ohhhhhh…” because it should have been obvious. She snaps her fingers, “You’re caught in that catch-22. Can’t get into vet school without proof of work experience and can’t get work experience without going to vet school.”

“That’s it,” he tells her. “But the vet I want to intern with said that they would take me as a vet tech with a recommendation from Mr. Smith.”

Erna makes a disgusted face. “Ew. It's just Erwin. Oh my god, I don't think I've ever heard anyone call him that.”

“Sorry,” he corrects himself and tries out, “Erwin.”

“Those recommendations aren't easy to get,” she tells him. Then she changes the subject and asks quickly, “You handled needles?”

“Um,” he offers hesitantly, “With people, yeah.”

“Explain.”

“I did a part time internship with my father’s research group, um, taking blood samples from people with Parkinsons…”

“Is that the thing that makes you shake?”

He cringes a little at the undelicate way of talking about something heartbreaking and says, “Yeah, more or less.”

Her eyes brighten. “If you can stick a moving geriatric vein, you can stick a horse.” She drops the bucket she was in the middle of putting together and starts walking out to the barn, telling him to follow her, then she stops, looks at Mikasa, and says, “You come, too, just in case…” 

Eren, holding his arms out like he wants to know what the hell he’s supposed to do, asks, “Can I come?”

“Not if I want to get work finished before noon today,” Erna shouts from the aisle of the barn. “Finish putting feed together and start turning out horses.”

She takes Armin and Mikasa to the ancient, green medicine cabinet in the washroom, opens it, and explains to them, “I take horses on training board whenever there’s a stall open. Makes things awkward when one of Erwin’s horses lease comes up, but it keeps us afloat.”

Armin says, hesitant and unsure, “Okay?”

“So we get some crazy fuckers,” she says dismissively as she reaches for a syringe in its package, pushing the needle into a tiny bottle of clear liquid and measuring it out herself, leaving the end of the needle inside the bottle for cleanliness, she looks at him and toward the sink. He gets the hint and goes to wash his hands.

While he’s doing that, she tells them both, “One horse has been here almost three weeks and I can’t turn her out, can’t ride her, can’t let her exercise, can barely hold her if I try to take her outside to hand graze. Took me one week just to get in the stall and get a halter on her.”

She eyes the needle and taps at the syringe. “How much do you know about horse anatomy?”

“A bit,” he answers. 

She will take that to mean nothing, just to be on the safe side. When his hands are clean, she grabs a little package of alcohol soaked gauze and leads them to one of the first stalls, saying, “Let me show you on a normal horse, one that's not bug fuck insane.” She opens the door one handed and Armin follows her in while Mikasa watches from outside. 

She says, “This is Sienna,” while she gives the brown horse a pat on the neck, interrupting her eating. She takes her hand and points to the tube of vein that runs from neck up to jaw, a half cylinder that feels like hose under fur while she says, “If there's air in the syringe, they die, just like people,” and Armin grunts like he's already been drilled in this hundreds of times. Then she says, “If you knick the vein they can go into a seizure… I don't know if the same is true of people…” 

At that he raises his eyebrows and shakes his head slowly. She says, “That's why I only handle the muscle injections.” She takes his fingers and puts them on the vein. “It's hard to fuck up if they're holding still, but--”

He says, “Yeah,” like he understands. 

“You think you can do it on a horse that will definitely be trying to kill us both like it's life depends on it?”

He takes the bottle and syringe from her and says honestly, “Maybe.”

She appreciates his candor. Mikasa asks, “Why did you want me just in case?”

“You got a phone?” Erna leaves the stall and when Armin follows, she closes it again. Mikasa nods and takes her iPhone out of her back pocket. Erna says, “You can use that to call 911.”

As she leads them to a different stall, she says, “Just in case…”

The horse that she's been unable to work with is in the middle of the line of stalls on this side of the aisle, next to a side door. As they approach, she says, “Hide that needle behind your back until your ready to use it. She's scared of needles… and literally everything…”

The horse is a flea-bitten grey mare with a beautiful neck and face. She reminds Erna of what she thinks a real unicorn would look like, but if they were just another animal and not fussy, not magical. Her owner says she flipped on a rider in Florida and hasn't been okay since. Broke her brain, figuratively. It took three people to get her into this stall. It took Erna three days of standing quietly in the corner of the stall, not looking at her, not moving towards her, until she could finally get close enough to take the leather shipping halter off of her face where it was rubbing her fur away behind her ears and on her nose. She'd wrapped it in soft strips of cotton and took two more days to finally get it back on her. The horse is more skittish than a deer and ready to throw down with anyone who gets near her. 

Erna’s a good rider, but she knows her limitations very well. She tells Armin, “I don't like tranquilizers, but I'm not going to try to ride her without it. I like my brain intact and unbleeding.” She gestures for Mikasa to stand back. 

The horse’s ears are already pricked forward, listening from the corner of her stall. Erna coos a soft, gentle, “Hey there, sweetheart,” like she is greeting a newborn baby to the world. “It's alright,” she drawls deep as her fingers grasp around the clip of the lead rope. She slowly unravels it from around her neck, folds the excess in her hands, makes sure the horse sees it, and is looking at her. No sneaking. No reason to be scared. She asks what she asks the mare very carefully around this time every morning, “Do you want to go graze?” 

The mare leans from Erna, pushing her far side to the wall, making the planks bow, curling her neck to look suspiciously down at the girl with the rope, but she does let her get nearer and nearer with every slow motion sidestep. She even lets her clip the lead rope to the brass ring hanging at the chin of her halter, ever so slowly, every muscle in her body tense, her lungs unbreathing.

She doesn't take the time to take the deep breath she very much needs before she says, “Okay, I got her.”

Armin turns out to be fast and at least more sure of himself than he seemed at first. He slides the stall door open, and without hesitating he swipes at her neck with the alcohol. Erna can't see anything he's doing as the horse lifts her head and starts to try to get away. Erna lows, “Easy,” trying to coax her to trust them. The horse starts hopping up on its back legs, lifting it's head high enough to hit the rafters, lifting Erna off of her feet while she tries to sound calm, shushing the horse, telling her that everything is okay with an uneven tremor to her voice. 

She didn't even see his hands go for her. The syringe is empty. Armin tells her, “Got it,” and steps back while the horse rears up again.

Erna just escapes the horse’s front hooves as it rears up again. She takes a deep breath and waits for the horse’s hooves to hit the ground again. When they do, she steps toward it, all her weight pulling it down with the rope. She unfastens the clip and the horse shies away from her, hooves banging against the wooden wall loudly. She turns and runs from the stall, sliding the door shut, and then exhaling. All three of them wait for a few seconds and watch the horse throwing her head angrily, pawing at the stall bedding and snorting. Erna starts to wonder if the kid didn't just miss entirely, but the horse let's her head sag finally, she looks confused, tries to fight the sleepy euphoric feeling, but in a few seconds her lips part with a little thin line of drool.

Armin, who is still holding a used syringe, holds it and his hands up high in the air when Erna turns and leaps for him, throwing her arms around his middle in a big hug, shouting, “Oh my fucking God, you big, beautiful, tall, stupid son of a bitch!”

He looks at Mikasa confused, because she sounds happy? But those words are harsh?

Erna lets go of him and says, “You can definitely stay if you can do that again. I don't care if you don't know the ass end of the horse from its face!”

Erwin blocks the light in the side door just then, walking in quickly and asking if everything’s okay. He sees Erna hugging Armin and tilts his head, raises an eyebrow. She turns around with a big smile on her face and shouts, “He can do an IV shot!”

Erwin smiles at how happy she is about it and his chest bounces in a deep, contained chuckle. Erna then remembers to tell him, “Hey, we need three checks. Just, like, split it, I guess.” She turns back to Armin, hooks her arm through his, the one that isn’t holding the used needle, and guides him back toward the washroom as she says, “I love this kid. That was fucking incredible. Hey, do you know how to drain an abscess? I can get Mike to teach you next week.”

  
  
  
  
  
  


At noon, “the end of the day,” Erwin cuts the kids their checks for one day of work, telling them it doesn’t split evenly three ways and shorting them on pennies if Erna knows him. She watches from her seat atop the washing machine, swinging her legs, holding her muddy, soaked Vans loosely atop the tips of her fingers. 

As he rips the checks out of his binder along their perforated edges, she goes, “So you still want to work here?”

The over-enthusiastic one who only knows enough about horses to irritate her says, “Oh, of course, yeah! I was so excited to get a response.” 

Erwin raises an eyebrow and asks slowly, with a glance at Erna over the kid’s shoulder, “Were you waiting long?”

Erna shoots him a sassy, indignant look. 

“A couple weeks.”

She mutters, “Don’t throw me under the bus, newbie.”

“What?”   
  


“Are all three of you moving into the house?” she asks innocently, instead of repeating herself so that Erwin can hear and scold her.

“That would be great, if that’s okay,” the blond one says. “It’s kind of a long drive to make every morning.”

“That’s fine,” Erwin says, his brows creased, just as perplexed as Erna as to why three kids would want to work here and get paid even less than the already meager wages, but not displeased about it. She pipes up from the washer, “There’s only two rooms.”

“Oh, um,” Eren says, looking at his friends, each looking a little tense. “We’ll figure it out?”

She takes away from the reaction that none of them are fucking each other. Thank god, because she’s so sick of living underneath couples and getting woken up by the noises of lazy, unimpressive sex. 

She points at Eren before tossing her sneakers into the sink next to her with a loud thump and she says matter of factly, “You’re gay.”

Erwin says, “Erna,” like she’s a child. “It’s rude to out people.”

“What?” she says, her palms out. “How many straight boys have you met who ride, because I’ve met exactly two.”

“You’ve met more than that,” Erwin sighs. 

“If you think so, then your gaydar needs a software update.”

Eren is left in the middle of this, blushing, trying to say, “I am, but,” he doesn’t know what that has to do with riding?

Erna nods at Armin and goes, “You I’m fifty fifty on.”

He blushes, too, brighter than Eren, and answers tactfully “I, um, don’t ride horses.”

“Got it.” Then she looks at Mikasa and says, “You, I genuinely don’t care. I just have a limit of one straight male roommate at a time. So, I guess y’all are okay.”

“Thank you,” she says as she takes her check and tucks a piece of hair behind her ear. 

Erna hops off of the washing machine, her bare feet landing on their toes, careful to try to keep as much of her foot as possible off of the dirty barn floor while she reaches to rinse the mud from the right paddock off of her sneakers. Erwin walks, through the bright white noon sun beating down on the gravel, back to his house. Tomorrow he’ll have a pen and paper for the newbies to write down their socials for the taxes that he is going to cheat on. 

Eren watches after him and says softly in awe, “He’s amazing.”

“You writing a book or something?” Erna lifts her sneakers from the sink and tosses them to land sole down outside the door, in the sun. She lifts the washing machine lid and drops her muddy socks on top of a load of saddle pads, then lifts her leg, stretching awkwardly to get her calf under the utility sink faucet, to wash away the dried mud she got all over her legs when the last horse refused to come to the gate to be brought inside from the muddiest paddock that will always be a mud pit no matter how fucking much sun beats down on it and no matter how long a drought they go through because the drainage is fucked and she keeps trying to tell Erwin that it could be different with some hard fucking work and shovels, and nothing gets done. He knows that if he leaves it alone for long enough she’ll get mad enough to just go out there and start hacking away at the soil one day, trying to dig trenches by herself. 

“I just…” Eren murmurs, “He’s like a legend.”

“The fuck do you know about it?” Erna mutters, pushing through the three to tiptoe outside, now that her legs and feet are mud-free. 

As she bends to pick up her sneakers, he, surprisingly, starts listing off a lot of things he knows about it. He recalls years and names of horses and literal jump off times off the top of his head. He pulls statistics she’s never even heard of, and tells her the names of Smith family sires going way back in the lineage of several Nations Cup winners in the past ten years. He knows what year Erwin’s mother won the Maclays at the National Horse Show. When she finishes lacing her water-logged Vans back onto her feet, she stands and gives him a look that makes him blush again, this time for having outed himself as, apparently, some kind of show jumping obsessed nerd. He shrugs and says, I watch a lot of youtube videos of FEI riders. 

“You know your history,” she says. “You’re into the Grand Prix scene?”

“Oh my god, yeah!” he shouts, “The riders are so amazing!” 

“Eh…” she shrugs. “The horses are amazing. A lot of the riders are just bored and rich enough to buy a horse that will carry and balance them over jumps.”

She seems to have bummed him out, which was her intention, but not that she sees how it looks on his face, she doesn't like it. She offers some hope. “You'll get to meet a lot of them if you stick around.”

“Really?!”

She can't wait for him to meet his first self important prick of an equestrian and get jaded like her. Whereas before she was apathetic, now she hopes Erwin gets one here soon so that she can crush this kid’s vision of them.

“Well yeah,” she says, obviously, “I mean, if we don't have a rider for these horses, we're fucked, which I guess means no farm, so…” she shrugs again. “You'll either meet an FEI ranked rider soon, or we'll all be looking for work.”

While Eren freaks out over this information, Erna tells them… mostly the other two… “You can move in whenever. My room is the only one on the ground floor, the two other rooms are upstairs with the kitchen and the living room and bathroom and… well that's it.” The bottom half of the house is just her room and a garage and a staircase landing. It was built that way thanks to its elevation and proximity to the river, which puts it at risk for flooding. She doesn’t even think her room was meant to be a bedroom originally. Probably more like a storage room. 

“I am off,” she says, plucking an ancient set of keys off a nail inside the door, “to one of my many side hustles.”

This means that she is going to take Erwin's truck to drive over to Wawa (a local convenience store and gas station chain) and use her phone (that Erwin still pays for) to see if one of the many contacts she's made by staying in touch with her former co-workers over the years needs some clipping or braiding or cleaning or training done, in order to supplement the meager wages Erwin pays her. She doesn't want to hang around one more time while one more set of people move their shit into her house, knowing that at the end of the summer they'll be moving all their shit out again. She doesn't want one more set of summer friends for one more year. She's got enough friends. 

She texts Cody, who is a barn manager for a dressage stable now, and asks, “Do you have any clients showing this weekend? I've got time to clip and braid,” while she walks inside the convenience store and buys the single two-pill pack of aspirin that will get her fingers through said braiding sessions, sliding two dirty dollar bills over the counter while eyeing the cigarettes she can't fucking afford. 

“Can you teach one of my kids while you're at it? They suck at braiding.” 

Erna texts back, “teach a man to fish and all of a sudden i’ve got both competition and fewer clients. no.”

“Cutthroat,” Cody responds, with an emoji that Erna can't see because this isn't a smartphone. Then, “Yeah, come over, I'll pay u so that I don't have to do it.”

Erna frowns. She'd rather get the work directly from some of Cody's rich clients. They tip. Cody doesn’t think she has to because they’re “friends.” 

The little paper pack of aspirin between her fingers flies into the cupholder and she yanks the gear shift of the truck to pull out of the parking lot and try to stay gone long enough that she won't feel any social obligation to talk to the new kids when she finally gets home.

Once there, Erna takes Cody up on her offer to go get them some coffee from the tack room, and while the other woman is gone, she follows the sound of water splashing on cement to the wash stalls. She finds three teenage-ish girls bathing a horse, and she walks right up to them and asks quickly, “Hey, you going to the Garden State Show tomorrow?”

They are excited to say that they are. They begin to talk about their horses and what level tests they are doing, and Erna cuts through with, “You need your horses braided?”

“Yeah, well,” they sort of pause in their attention to the horse and waver nervously. “Cody told us to do it ourselves this time.”

“Twenty bucks a piece,” she offers. 

“Really?” they ask, surprised, because it is ridiculously low. They have to go get the money from their parents, but they say they’ll be right back, and Erna reminds them to make sure to also tell their parents that tips are appreciated. That always gets her forty dollars. The smallest bill these people ever carry are twenties. 

She walks around the newly built, expensive boarding and training barn, and introduces herself to every person she sees. She picks up three more braiding and clipping jobs to keep her busy into the evening.

Every boarder who happens to be there that Saturday gets her number, hooked on their perfect, twenty dollar, button-braids. The next time they call she jacks the price up to fifty. Then she levels out at a hundred bucks a pop, and if they don’t want their horses to look like shit, then they give it up. That’s spare change to most of these people anyway. 

She sits in the truck with her little notepad, unfolding copies of handwritten receipts and doing math, counting her money twice. She does her own taxes.. It was a couple years ago that she decided she isn’t going down with Erwin one day when he gets fucking audited. 

It’s dark out when she gets home and parks the truck near the barn, getting out quietly and walking between the paddocks without any light to guide her steps. A plastic bag with a pack of cigarettes, a bag of chocolate chip cookies, and a bunch of bananas hangs off her sore wrist. 

When she opens the door to the house it pulls the smell of pasta out of the stairwell and her stomach growls. She shoulders her bedroom door open, reaches into the plastic bag, and tosses the cigarettes onto her bed. She kicks her shoes off next to the door and heads upstairs, cringing in anticipation of needing to make small talk.

Brightness slowly floods her space as she gets to the top of the stairs. The yellow kitchen light displays the trio just starting to eat. When Erna crosses to the fridge, she says, “Don’t mind me.”

“Did you have dinner?” Mikasa asks right away.

Erna holds up her plastic bag as an answer while she reaches for her bottle of whiskey in the back of the fridge on the top shelf, hidden now behind a wall of groceries that don’t belong to her. 

Mikasa asks, “Want some?” anyway. 

Erna closes the fridge, turns around, and shrugs. She says, “Yeah,” because she stopped being shy about taking free food a long fucking time ago. 

Both of the boys stand offer her their chair. There’s only three at the kitchen table. There’s only ever been three or fewer people living here. She says that she likes standing, which is true. She starts to feel too tired when she actually sits down. Sitting makes it difficult to keep going. She sets her half full bottle of whiskey in the center of the table, and says, “If you drink...”

She thinks they might be eighteen. They definitely seem to be finished with high school at least. She takes a plate that Mikasa has piled with plain pasta and meat sauce and grabs herself a fork. 

She would rather take her bottle and her plate to her room and be alone, but she knows that’s rude, and she’s trying to cut down on her rude behavior toward people she works with. Makes life easier. 

Eren uses his fork to point at the collage of pictures and clippings and stickers and shit taped to the wall near the washer and dryer, about a hundred scraps from people who lived here before. He goes, “Is that Connor Kean?” and Erna looks at the picture he’s pointing to. 

“Yeah,” she deadpans, tired and drained. 

“Is that you with him?”

“That’s two years ago,” she says.

“You met him?!”

“No,” she finally says sarcastically, “That polaroid is photoshopped.”

“What’s he like?”

Erna swallows a big forkful of pasta, licks her lips, and says, “He was gross. He hit on our nineteen year old show groom and tried to get her drunk.”

Eren’s face falls. 

Erna twirls her fork in her pasta and deadpans again, “Never meet your heroes, kid.”


	5. chapter four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> still accepting submissions for a title, or even chapter titles. idk why i'm good at writing this thing, but bad at titles.

Erwin's life has always been a migratory cycle, up and down the east coast. He was born in a small hospital in New Jersey and lived in what would be his true home for only three months before he was brought along on the trek to Florida for the winter. His mother refused to be left behind with her new son, in the snowy, grey January weather, while her husband coached riders in the warm sun of Wellington. They started taking Erwin with them then and did so every year of his life until he was old enough to drive a car and make his own plans, which were still to winter in Florida every year that he could, having grown accustomed to the lifelong habit.

The year starts with three months at the Winter Equestrian Festival in Wellington, Florida. The trailer is loaded with horses and gear and supplies on Years Eve and he sets out January first. He's home again in April. The horses get a two month long break so that they’re hungry for competition again in the summer. During this time he concentrates on overseeing the weaning of foals, starting of two year olds over jumps, breeding of mares, and finishing of project horses. 

The Princeton horse show is at the end of May. Then Devon, if any of his horses have a shot at winning a Grand Prix class. If none of them are doing well, Erwin will skip it and get his younger horses some experience at a smaller show with cheaper registration fees. Then there's Saugerties for a month-long horse show with exposure and prizes that are absolutely essential. The Central Park horse show is in September, but none of his horses or riders has qualified for it in years. 

The best years, when the horses were winning extravagant amounts of money and his parents were the biggest names in riding, they would all go to Canada for the Winter Fair horse show. They had a horse and rider qualify and compete in the Pan-American games seven times in a row. Erwin went to Seoul when his father's star rider joined the USET in the Olympics there atop a horse coincidentally born the same year as Erwin. 

As the years went on, more money got poured into the sport by the wealthy children of the one percent who were raised on riding lessons. The level of riding at competitions didn't get any better, and the horses got more expensive. The industry around Erwin changed with the economic recession. Quality riders without excessive wealth got priced out of competition. Warmbloods imported from Europe became the trend, horses that could carry a rider over any jump without breaking a sweat so long as they had a strong bit in their mouths and plugs in their ears. 

Erwin will put up any of his family's horses against a Hanoverian or a Dutch Warmblood, but they take a certain kind of rider. They won't tolerate the awkward balancing on hands and knees and the perching over the front of the saddle that’s taught by trainers who don't train so much as placate their rich clients. The Smith horses won't “take a joke” as they say in the industry. A wrong pull on the bit or a badly timed poke with a spur and they will take offense - and whether that means that they won't run as fast or jump as high as they could, or it means they will buck you head first into a pool of mud, is really up to them. 

The changing landscape made it hard for Erwin's parents to find interested people who could ride and win on their horses that expect something from their riders. Business faded so slowly as to not seem like the death knell that it was at first. 

It’s no fault of the horses. Erwin will defend their quality to anyone. They have never let him down. The problem is struggling to keep riders. He doesn't know if it's him, or them, or the fact that he can't offer them a fair percentage of the prize money, but he knows it isn't the horses. The horses are strong and fast and competitive. They're smart as hell and they do their damnedest for the right person. 

He didn't have the right person this time around. They left him in the last week of the Winter Equestrian Festival (WEF) in Florida after a few lackluster rides knocked down their FEI ranking. Erwin had to send the horses back in February to a disgruntled Erna and limp home without the profit margin that normally gives him a cushion this time of year. 

Since then, for over a month, he's been networking his ass off. He's even less involved with the daily running of the farm, leaving everything to Erna while he makes thin excuses to talk to people, face to face, because it's harder for them to say no to his face. He's had one or two people out to the farm every week, some of them twice as they try to make up their minds to risk their show year on him or find a way to politely decline. He’s been working so many old connections he’s considering starting a spreadsheet to track his rejections. It’s already April and it’s too late to not have anyone confirmed to ride at the upcoming Princeton show. He’s been a wreck on the inside, his anxiety growing with every day that this unprecedented streak of bad luck stretches. He’s hoping against hope that today will be the day to turn things around dramatically.

After a very rushed breakfast of dry toast, just for the sake of eating something, he hears the deep rumble of Mike's truck nearing the bottom of the driveway. He'd forgotten in his distraction that it's the second Saturday of the month, the day that he comes to work on the horses.

“Shit.” He allows himself the rare piece of profanity under his breath as the gravel crunches under his boots. He wipes the consternation from his face with a deep breath before entering the feed room of the barn. 

Erna looks up at him, startling bright, crystal blue eyes standing out against the dim sun filtering through yellowed windows caked in dirt. She’s bent over a bag of feed, paused in the middle of leveling a scoop. “What?” She deadpans at him, weary, and cranky as always. 

He holds up a sheet of paper ripped from the pad he keeps on his desk. “I need these horses ready to ride in an hour.” The three other stablehands scurry around the room, preparing feed for the afternoon while Erna stands there and huffs at him like she’s annoyed she needs to stop what she’s doing to talk to him. “Takes me five minutes to tack up a horse. What's the big deal?”

“I have someone important coming out unexpectedly.”

“Cool,” she says with bitter sarcasm. 

“I mean it.”

“Alright, Erwin,” she says in a deep, careless drone. She slams the metal lid down on the trash can holding a grain bag and marches over to the shelves of medicines and supplements, hands shooting for the right bottles and powders. “Who's coming anyway?"

“Levi Ackerman.”

Eren, over in the corner stops what he’s doing, gasps and says, “What?” 

“Oh,” is all Erna says in a calm little breath, trying to make it sound like she’s only interested out of courtesy, as she always does when it’s a big name that she recognizes. 

Erwin puts the list of his best, most competitive horses on the tack trunk next to him and says, “I want them warmed up and less than ten minutes apart, understand?”

“Yeah,” she says, defensively, coming over for the list, “I got it. Could you act like I’ve done this before for one second?”

He walks out to the aisle of the barn to check that the horses are already in their stalls, stops short when he remembers something, and yells toward the feed room, “Make sure they're groomed well!”

He walks right across the aisle to meet Mike in the washroom and tell him, “I got a text from Levi Ackerman last night.”

“Oh?” He isn’t surprised. Erwin had told him that the famous equestrian was supposed to be coming at the end of the month.

“He’s going to be here in two hours.”

“Oh,” he says, now much more impressed.

Erna walks into the washroom with a horse that's due for new shoes, lead rope snaked around her shoulders. Without stopping, she spits, arcing her neck back and then shooting a projectile of mucus into the utility sink eight feet away. Mike shoots Erwin an amused smirk as he bends to pick up his tools. Erwin shakes his head and he feels a new wrinkle form near his eyes when he has to ask Erna, “Could you please not do that just for this morning?”

She blinks at him after finishing turning the horse for Mike. “Do what?”

“Just... be on your best behavior.” Erwin asks his stable hand, frustrated, rubbing his eyes while she scowls at him.

Erna's bangs have long since grown out from the scruffy fringe that hid her eyes when she was seventeen. She wears them pulled back with the rest of her shady-hued brunette hair in a braid or a ponytail, so that now Erwin can really see how she squints when she's sore at him. Lucky for him.

“I am _always_ on my best behavior,” she says, tilting her nose and chin up in a mocking imitation of propriety. 

“Well could you be better than that, then?” he asks dryly with tired, lowered eyelids.

Her lips quirk, she exhales a little huffy breath from her curled lips, and she circles her shoulders while looking off to the side, as if there's something very important for her to look at on the whiteboard next to him. She doesn’t like him telling her how to behave. Not around clients or riders or anyone. It’s the one thing he can’t tell her to do. He even suspects her attachment to her bad behavior is what holds her back from trying to be anything more than a stablehand, where manners are not required. Mike laughs, cutting the tension between them as always and Erna gives the horse she's holding some slack in it's lead rope. Deigning to acknowledge him again, she asks Erwin, “What do you think I'm gonna _do_?”

He doesn't say anything at first. Then, he sighs. “It's… Could you…”

Mike pulls the shoe from the horse's left front hoof and it clatters to the floor, quickly followed by three others faster than Erwin can think of words to say. His boyfriend does a quick rasp of the horse's hooves before bringing the shoes out to his truck for reshaping. The sound of hammer on anvil rings from outside while Erna keeps her eyes on the chestnut horse she's now clipped to the cross ties near her for some additional help controlling the animal. 

Erwin attempts again, “Can you…”

Mike is already back, orange-hot iron in the tongs in his hand. He isn't wearing gloves _again_ and Erwin's train of thought de-rails as his boyfriend's inattention to safety distracts him. The impossibly tall, barrel chested man easily grabs up the nervous horse's hoof and holds the iron to it, getting an eye for its fit before committing to it. The horse raises its head fast, but Erna is faster and yanks it back down with the chain attached to the end of her rope. The strong, acrid smell of burning hoof fills the wash room - the room they use for bathing, clipping, doing laundry, writing lists, administering medicine, storing saddle pads, bridles, lead ropes, anything that is needed often. The wash room is the beating heart of this farm, somehow perfectly in the center of a radius encompassing all of its important points - the edges of the five fields, to the tips of the river that mark the boundaries all seem equidistant from the point at which Erwin is standing in a 12’x18’ room just to the right of the main barn doors, symmetrically mirrored by the feed room on the other side of the concrete center aisle between two long rows of stalls. This room has come to feel like Erna’s space. Her coffee cup has rested on the lid of the washing machine almost every morning for five years. It's her handwriting on the whiteboard that lists horses to turn out, and on every label on every storage bin. Her face frowning at him every day.

Erwin shakes his head at himself. It’s ridiculous feeling like an intruder on his own farm. He changes tact and says, “I was going to talk to you about this before he came, which wasn't supposed to be another month from now, but--”

“Talk to me about what?” She narrows her eyes at him suspiciously.

Mike stands back up, let's the horse drop it's hoof back to the floor, and heads back out the door to shape the horseshoe some more. As he's passing Erwin, he elbows him lightly, teasing, and gives Erna a wink over his shoulder, telling her, “Your face.”

Her jaw drops. “What about my face?!” she shrieks.

Erwin groans while Mike goes back out to the truck and chuckles to himself. Erwin holds a palm up, gesturing for her to calm down. “Your face is fine,” but he has to say, “It's just…”

He's saved from himself by the new stablehand. The hazel-golden eyed brunette walks into the washroom quickly and grabs a lead rope, his head down. Erna barks at him “Newbie, what are you doing?”

The boy stops in his tracks readily like he came in expecting her to yell at him. “I was gonna, um, switch turnout?” 

“Do you see the farrier list on that whiteboard?”

“... Yes.”

“Were you going to turn out any of those horses?”

“Umm…”

“Do not,” she says sternly. “Grab a hoof pick and start grooming instead.”

As the new boy puts the lead rope back, Erna turns her now sour and put upon expression back on Erwin and goes, “You were saying?”

“See that's the problem,” he says over the sound of hammer clanging on metal outside. “Just for today, do you think you could be, you know…”

“What?”

Erwin cringes. “Could you be…”

Mike, hot iron in the tongs in his hand, rounds the corner and fills in for Erwin, “Pleasant.”

And Erwin winces and covers his eyes. Erna's eyes go wide and her jaw drops. She says, “I am…” and trails off to make a high-pitched and indignant noise of frustration, stomping a single foot like an ornery filly.

“Just… don't say anything unless he talks to you, please? You have a tone that comes off as…”

“Short,” Mike fills in.

Erwin grimaces just as Mike speaks up, automatically, but then realizes that's been his first diplomatic answer. Erna’s grip tightens on the lead rope in her hands and Erwin can see the horse she's holding tense its body. “Fucking _fine_ ,” she hisses. 

“Watch your mouth.”

There's a tense quiet. Mike picks up the horse’s right front hoof and presses the hot iron to it. The now nervous horse attempts to rear up, barely jostling Mike who stubbornly holds the hoof in place between his legs. Erwin watches the line of Erna's tricep deepen as she yanks the horse's head down and then gives it a few more tugs, making the chain sing, for good measure, narrowing her eyes at the sixteen hand tall animal as it jerks it's nose back and forth at each tug.

When Mike is satisfied with the fit, he reaches for his nails, and teases, “You made dad mad…”

Erna suppresses the laughter that almost rises from her chest, but she smiles big and genuine, her cloud blue eyes wrinkling at their corners and the hint of a dimple showing in her right cheek, skin glowing - and Erwin just needs Mike here to make her smile like that all the time so that maybe one more potential professional rider won't be turned off by her strict and unforgiving mask that hides all that innocence underneath. 

Erwin shakes his head at them as she teases Mike back, “I thought _you_ were my dad…”

“What would that make Erwin?”

He turns around and steps out the door. He doesn't have time for them. But as he's walking away he hears Erna answer, “Mom?”

Erwin goes back to the house and watches the video again - the one of Ackerman's ride at the 

Longines qualifiers in France. Then the Grand Prix in Switzerland. Then the CSI in Zurich. YouTube takes him down a rabbit hole of fast rides full of impossible turns and some of the most perfect synchronicity between horse and rider he's seen in years. Every jump he reaches for his horse’s neck and follows it with his hands, keeping his balance back over the center of the saddle mid-air instead of perching out over the shoulders and pinning his hands down in a short crest release like seems to be the trend as horses get more athletic and riders focus less on equitation in favor of just hanging on. 

His style is fluid and easy like Erwin’s never seen. The way he can pick a horse up and get them balanced on the outside rein through a turn is masterful. 

He’s halfway through a video of Levi's ride in a Grand Prix in Ireland, his home country, on a grey horse owned by his uncle, Kenny Ackerman. The video is five years old. The course is beautiful, long spreads of single vertical jumps the maximum height FEI rules will allow. His horse is running with its head held high at the start, not a good sign. It knocks a rail off of the very first jump, a wide, 5’ tall oxer. The next jump is a refusal. The flea-bitten grey stallion balks at a simple vertical and Levi's retribution with the riding crop is swift and furious. Erwin winces. He then jumps out of his chair when a deep voice rumbles behind him. “Hmph. Temper.”

He exhales deeply. “You scared the--”

“He's here.”

“Oh my god…” Erwin groans. He didn't realize he'd been watching that long. 

“He's very _short_ ,” Mike informs him. Erwin already knew. He could tell from his proportions against the horses he was riding in the videos. 

He hurries out to the hallway and checks himself in the mirror. He says, “Short is good.” He can at least know he won't be too top heavy for any of the horses. Shorter is always better in a rider.

“And cranky,” Mike says, tapping his finger against his chin, “Almost like…” 

Erwin jogs out the door hoping he won't find Erna in the driveway scowling at Ireland's show jumping rookie of the year who has no business being here. He had the highest earnings of any international rider while Erwin had one of his worst years, but he'd gotten a call months ago from Levi's uncle of all people. He remembered the man vividly, but hadn't seen him since he was very small. He makes that much of an impression. Their phone conversation was quick and bare of pleasantries. Kenny asked if Erwin was still breeding his parents horses, though he had to ask twice before Erwin could catch up with his thick, fast Irish accent. After he confirms that the farm is still running and they're still “competitive,” Kenny explains that his nephew needs to spend a year in the states. He doesn't say why. Erwin assumes it's a citizenship issue. Equestrians move around all the time in order to be eligible for different countries national teams. Kenny says “the stubborn cunt” won't choose a barn to ride with until he's seen it with his own eyes. He ended the call with, “You got horses to ride, you'll see him May thirtieth.” And that was all. 

It's May first. He got a text last night from a number he didn't recognize that said, “gonna be in your area tomorrow 9am” If he hadn't signed it with his initials, Erwin would have been hard pressed to figure out what the cryptic message was about or who it was from. Erwin muttered “Gets his manners from his uncle,” into the pitch black of his room at 2am after the buzz of his phone woke him. But he'd wasted no time returning the late night text with, “You're welcome to come see the farm.”

Because he very much needs this, he thinks as the bright morning sun hits his face. He blinks, scans the parking lot. No Erna in sight, thank god. His rider is standing there, saddle on hip, and a neutral, but tired, expression on his face. Erwin shouts “Hello,” from the walkway and waves. When he gets to Levi, hand outstretched, the man gives him a weak shrug. Erwin realizes he's holding a to-go cup in his other hand, fingertips gripping the edge of the lid, and they have an awkward moment. Levi asks, “Those your jumps I passed on my way in?” 

“Yes,” Erwin answers, with eagerness that he hopes doesn’t come off as desperate to the man looking up at him. “There's the outdoor course by the river, a smaller outdoor course over there,” he points in the direction of the foals’ field, “and there's an indoor with jumps set up.”

Levi nods and looks in the direction of the first grassy field he asked about. “Need some fresh fucking air,” being his only response. “Room to breathe.” 

“Did you want to take a look at the farm or?”

Levi cuts him off. “If it's all the same to you, I'll ride the horses first.” And he starts walking away down the driveway back toward the two acre large field of grass with it's natural brush jumps and hand built oxers with meter long spreads that he’d passed on his way in. Erwin casts a worried glance back at the barn, bites his lip and follows the unsociable man who’s holding an expensive Devoucoux saddle on his hip, hoping that Erna’s sharp ears that seem to hear everything were within range to catch that. 

He turns back again to look his potential rider up and down. The man notices that Erwin isn’t following him and stops. Erwin asks, “Did you want to get a helmet?”

“Ah, fuck.” Levi walks back over to his car, a dark blue sports car that looks like it just came off the rental lot, muttering, “You people love your fucking helmets.”

“Well,” Erwin says, “It’s the… whole… concussion... thing…”

Levi sets his cup on top of the car and opens the door, leaning in and coming out with a black riding helmet. He cards a hand through his jet black hair, parted slightly off center and undercut before he hides it underneath the helmet.

Over in the washroom an eager and golden-eyed stablehand peeks out the door, the sounds of a horse being shod behind him almost drown out his reverent, whispered, “He’s so cool…” as he watches the two men out in the parking lot. 

Erna barks from the second set of cross ties where she’s brushing dirt out of the nail holes in a horse’s hooves with a stiff bristled brush. “Go talk to him, then.”

“Oh my god, I can’t,” the starstruck eighteen year old says. 

Erna stands and grabs a washcloth from the top of a stack of towels near the washing machine and wets it under the utility sink’s faucet. “Professional equestrians are just assholes like anyone else,” she tells him so that he might benefit from her personal experience. She squeezes the water out of the washcloth and uses it to pick up particles of dust off of the horse’s forehead that the soft face brush wasn’t quite able to flick away. “If you go say hi he’s just gonna say it back and then look at you like you’re dirt.”

“Oh my god, do you think so?” he asks her as if that would be great. She wishes this kid would have some fucking pride, because he’s the only one out of the three she hired who can semi-competently lead a horse down to the field and back. 

She whips a bridle and martingale onto the sixteen hand tall bay gelding she’s been brushing and moves to fasten the noseband and throat latch as quickly as possible, hooking the reins in her elbow so that the horse can’t get too far if it decides to get fidgety. She tells Eren to grab a saddle pad - not that one, the blue and white one with the barn monogram on it. She reaches for the girth that she brought from the tack room and tosses it over the horse’s shoulders to be carried down to the ring, then she shoves the reins at Eren. 

He blinks at her.

She gives him a little head shake like she is wondering what the fuck is wrong with him, she raises her eyebrows, widens her eyes, and says, “Bring the horse down to the field?”

“Me?” he asks in shock and horror.

“Yeah, I don’t wanna have to see Erwin’s fucking face. He’s being a dick.”

“But…”

Erna shoves her thumbs into her temples and then rubs her fingers over her brows as she says slowly, “I am literally only asking you to lead a horse down one hundred and fifty feet of driveway across a quiet road to a grass field where someone else will take that horse from you, you will wait,” and at this point her voice starts rising in volume gradually with every word, “and then you will take the horse back to the barn and iF yOU canNOT HANDLE THAT RESPONSIBILITY THEN--”

Eren is already leading the horse to go out through the main barn doors. She stops yelling once he’s in the driveway. Mike laughs. Erna grabs a lead rope from the hook hanging from the ceiling and goes to grab the next horse she needs to get ready. 

  
  


Erwin struggles to make small talk with Levi as they walk down the driveway to the grass field across the road. The pale, black-haired Irishman only grunts at polite questions about his trip. In return he asks practical questions, like how big the property is, how many horses, etc. They stop at the edge of the freshly mowed expanse of grass showcasing Erwin’s largest course of jumps. Levi seems to be out of practical questions, as he stands next to Erwin and looks out at the scenery. 

Erwin shifts uncomfortably, feeling awkward about the silence. He tries to ask Levi how his uncle is doing. The man responds, “Stubborn old fuck is bitter an’ mean as ever.”

“Er...How long have you been in the country?” he tries.

“Weeks. Ol’ man sent me to fucking Florida first.” Erwin assumes he means Wellington, where some of the most successful trainers keep stables for the winter. “Was s’posed to stop at three barns in North Carolina,” he says the name of the state with emphatic disgust before commenting, “I’m not setting foot in that hellhole.”

How fortunate for him, Erwin thinks. Levi immediately asks him, “What’s the weather like here in the summer?” He looks down at the ground they’re standing on, which is dark and moist from the sun showers and sprinkles that are common in spring, and he says, “I see you get rain.”

Erwin pauses to notice that the man just slipped into an american accent, but he then shakes his head and shrugs. “Summer is hot and humid.” Levi frowns and Erwin hurries to add, “Not as hot as North Carolina. Thirty-two celsius at worst.”

“You know your conversions,” Levi notes. 

Erwin huffs a slight laugh out his nose, and finally, there’s the horse. He can hear its hooves on the gravel before it appears around the curve of the driveway, without Erna. He resists the urge to ask Eren why she delegated him to lead the horse to them. He doesn’t want to look like he doesn’t have a handle on his own farm. He looks up the driveway as if it’ll have an answer as to where his best stablehand is. 

Levi asks, “What’s ‘is name?” returning to his Irish accent.

And Eren can’t answer him, because of course he hasn’t learned all of the horses names yet. He’s been here a week and there are more than forty of them to memorize. Erwin rushes to say, “He’s registered as Talk of the Town,” while Levi goes about throwing his saddle onto its back, adjusting the pad and girth. 

“What name would he recognize?”

“Ah.” He means the horse’s ‘stable name’. Their ‘real’ name, the name the people who work with him everyday use, because you can’t walk around asking, ‘did anyone feed “Talk of the Town” yet?’

“Pace,” Erwin says. “Sixteen years old, CSI Level 2, and steady.”

Just as Erwin is praising his even temper, Pace whips his head around like a serpent to try to nip at Levi’s side while he tightens the girth. The horse catches an elbow to the face. Levi deadpans in his unexpectedly deep voice, “Be fucking polite, then, Pace.”

Erwin rips the reins from Eren’s hands hard and fast enough to cause a blister. The boy backs away shaking his fingers out with a blush so hot it shows through his deep tan. 

Erwin is about to offer Levi a leg up when he pulls his stirrup down to mount up. Pace is a tall horse at 16 hands, but suddenly Levi’s hand is in the horse’s mane and his foot is in the stirrup, and, demonstrating an impossible amount of flexibility he pulls himself up to the saddle without even a grunt of effort. Erwin blinks and almost forgets to flip the reins over the horse’s head. 

“He’s lunged and ready to go if you want to skip the warmup,” Erwin says without knowing for a fact that it’s true, but trusting that Erna would never send out a cold horse. 

Levi’s expression, which has remained very blank so far, finally changes, his brow creasing and the corners of his lips turning downward as he settles into his stirrups and shortens his reins. He squeezes his calves lightly at Pace’s sides and they walk off together, wet, three inch tall grass swishing under hoof. He does a full warm up before jumping, almost too much warm up as if to prove a point that skipping the ‘work’ of riding isn’t his style. While he’s pulling Pace into a well-balanced and collected circle at a ground-eating canter, Erwin finally looks at his new stablehand who is frozen in place, awe-struck. He lowers his voice and tells the kid, “Tell that girl she better be down here with the next horse.”

“I… um… yeah, okay…” 

Fifteen minutes later, when Eren walks a well-worked Pace back up the driveway to the barn, he relays the message to Erna very gently. She still curses loudly and throws the soapy sponge she’d just been using at the wall. She asks Mike to please make sure that the new kid knows how to properly put away the horse while she brings the next one down to the field. Mike grunts at her tersely. There are only two things that ruin his mood, and one of them is asking him to interrupt his work and help with something around the farm like he’s a common barn brat. Erna says, “I know,” to his grumbling while she lets go of the horse’s reins momentarily to rush over to the shelves and grab a new saddle pad to tuck under her arm. She pleads, “I’m sorry,” as he stands and puts down his horse’s hoof, simultaneously tossing his file into his shoeing box with high velocity and a loud metallic bang. 

Erna hooks her elbow through the horse’s reins again and the light grey mare, Noel, turns her head toward the girl, pushing at her with her nose as if to say, ‘I’m _bored_.’

Mike says, “Hold on a second,” and walks over to stand in front of Erna, leaning down and looking at her closely. She glares at him with suspicion as he grabs up a clean washcloth from her stack of barn towels. He quickly wipes some flecks of dirty, soapy water off of her face right above her eyebrow and on the tip of her nose, then he beats the hay off of her shoulders and pulls some pieces of it out of her hair while she recoils and shouts, “The fuck is this? I’m not going to prom, fuck off.” 

He laughs and holds his hands up, and she takes that defenseless opportunity to punch him in his abs. Her punch doesn’t even make him flinch. She knew it wouldn’t. The horse on her elbow swings its hips, slightly startled at the rough-housing, so they knock it off. He ruffles her hair as she walks past with the horse and he tells her, “You could at least _try_ to lure a sugar daddy so that I don’t have to keep loaning Erwin the money to pay for your phone.”

She yells back through the small corridor, “You’re disgusting.”

He follows after her. “I’m just looking out for you. Least you could do is smile.”

She knows he’s only teasing and that he’d like to get a big reaction out of her. Instead she mutters, “Do less lookin’ out for me.” 

When she gets down to the opposite edge of the road, Erwin’s talking with Levi about which of his horses are CSI qualified, at which levels. Noel is qualified up to CSI*4. She’s a gutsy horse that Erna is very proud of. 

Erwin shoots her a small smile. When Noel has an issue with her girth being tightened Erna barely seems to move her wrist, but transfers a tremendous amount of force through the reins in her hand, to the bit in Noel’s mouth, with the silent message, ‘You better fucking not,’ and Noel flares her nostrils and lifts her head, but she does not go ahead and bite at her rider like she was threatening to. With the efficiency of mechanical parts, Levi and Erna both move with a jerky smoothness. Levi’s foot hits the stirrup, Erna flips the reins over Noel’s head, and steps back and out of the way as Levi picks them up and the horse walks off. 

Erwin sidles next to her as the horse walks away. He says, “Thank you.”

“What’d Eren do wrong?”

“He’s just…” Erwin catches the scent of morning dew evaporating off of sweet grass and inhales deeply, “not you.”

They’re quiet for some minutes while Levi warms up with the mare. Then, Erna says, “You just don’t want to say that I’m your favorite because you don’t want me to ask for a raise.”

Erwin points out, “If this man starts riding for us, Erna, I’ll be able to afford to give you a raise and a bonus, so just don’t sass me for the next hour or two?”

Not a lot can sway Erna. You can’t offer her time off or praise or the pride of a job well done in exchange for something you want to get her to do… but money always gets her attention. So she brings her fingers to her lips and mimes locking them and tossing the key over her shoulder while she placidly settles her eyes on the horse and rider a hundred feet away.

She and Erwin watch Noel and Levi take a wide arc to a single vertical jump set at a meter high. Noel charges at it, getting excited and pulling hard at the reins, trying to break her rider’s hold on her mouth. Levi lets her go and soar over the jump, but after they’re back on the ground, he lifts his hands, leveraging the bit to pinch at her painfully and punish her for the infraction of getting carried away. She collects her head, tucks her chin to relieve the pressure on her mouth and runs on to the next fence he aims for. He lets her have her head as they near the jump and she takes the slack in the reins without taking advantage of it. They move together over the colorful oxer in the distance as if it’s the easiest thing in the world, and Erwin says softly to himself, “Beautiful.”

Erna shrugs. Not that she can say she’s seen better. She just doesn’t like acting impressed with anything or anyone. “How’s it going?” she asks her boss, with a little antagonism and skepticism aimed at him. 

“He’s asking a lot of questions. That’s usually a good sign.”

“Maybe he’s just trying to be polite.”

“It’s definitely not that.”

Hooves on gravel make Erna swivel her head around to see Eren bringing down the next horse on his own, without being told to. After they cross the road, Eren places the reins in Erna’s outstretched hand. She looks the chestnut colored Selle Francais horse up and down and then tilts her head at it. Something’s off. She starts pulling at the buckles at the sides of the bridle while she tells him, “You almost got it right.”

Erwin explains to the teenager, “That bridle isn’t the right fit.”

The boy groans, “Unhhh, I’m sorry.”

“You’re alright,” Erna says impatiently. She’s the sort of person who doesn’t bear apologies. “There’s a learning curve and you haven’t had any training yet. How were you supposed to know?” She readjusts each piece of the bridle to make a more comfortable fit for the horse, with the air of a mother fidgeting with a child to make it look more presentable. 

Erwin frowns. Bridle fitting is pretty basic knowledge and the new kid isn’t even listening to her. Eren’s already distracted by the horse and rider now running to a triple combo of vertical jumps ending with an oxer with an eighteen-inch spread. He’s mouthing ‘wow’ to himself as his more experienced coworker checks the saddle pad and the size of girth he brought down. 

Noel digs deep into the ground two strides before the first jump and clears it easily, kicking her back hooves out on the departure, taking one stride to the next jump and clearing it with a little more difficulty. There’s room for two big running strides before the oxer and she takes the extra space to throw a small buck. Erwin cringes. Erna smiles to herself. Eren watches on wide-eyed, and Levi just keeps his heels down, keeps his balance centered, digs his spurs into the mare’s sides, and drives her at the last jump, daring her to pick her fucking legs up in time to avoid crashing through it. She does, because she’s a badass bitch like that, Erna thinks anyway, and she beams until she remembers that someone might catch her smiling. 

Levi’s unbiased assessment, upon returning the horse to Eren’s waiting hands, is, “She’s got an attitude.”

And that’s the first time Erna hears his voice with that deep, dark undertow of melody and that thick accent, and she feels suddenly completely overwhelmed with this feeling that, her very limited emotional intelligence tells her is something like lust to the point of anger. Something that, it occurs to her, men must feel often, but is new to her. 

Noel sidesteps with her back legs fast as soon as Levi’s taken his saddle from her back and Eren panics a little, tripping over his feet to stay with her as she tries to spin and drag him back to the barn with her. Erwin steps in to help or to take over, while Erna holds the fresh horse and rolls her eyes at them. 

Levi pays no attention to the small debacle behind him, and he looks directly at Erna, obviously waiting for her to say something, so she says the first thing that comes to her head. With a nod toward the horse in her hands: “This is Remy, he’s French.” 

His quick smile vanishes in a second, but she sees it, alert as she is, and she’s embarrassed, because he just smiled at her horrible joke. She cringes and thinks she needs to spend less time around Mike. Her adopted dad’s horrible sense of humor is rubbing off on her.

He walks around her to the horse’s left side and starts to put his saddle on its back. Remy holds still while his girth is tightened. He doesn’t have the quick temper of any of the horses Erna thinks of as the Smith originals - the horses that descend from the line Erwin’s father started with a stallion named Scout. Remy is an overseas import Erwin blew some winnings on about twelve years ago, because despite not having the money to burn, he knows a good horse when he sees one and he’s still convinced this is the one that will go far. Remy earned back his purchase price of $250k in his first three years of competition, then he suffered a suspensory injury, and was only just coming back into work when Erna came on. She’s overseen much of his rehabilitation and is solicitous and careful of him more than any other horse. 

Even though she knows she isn’t supposed to speak unless spoken to, she has to advocate for her favorite gentleman as the latest show jumping celebrity takes him from her just as many other professional riders have in the past months. “He’s forward. Not a stick and spur horse.”

She watches his throat as he swallows and nods that he understands. Remy, his coat glistening with natural shine, glinting gold highlights from the sun hitting his shoulders, paws at the grass with his front hoof and Levi gives him some slack in the rein, murmuring softly with his deep voice, “Go on then.” She watches the pair walk off and transition into an easy trot, Remy’s tail swishing behind him with every step. 

Erwin, holding Noel still, a hand over her nose, asks Erna, “You want to take this horse?”

Erna remembers herself and jogs over, taking the reins and shrugging off the butterflies in her stomach. She makes a ‘come on’ kind of noise at the grey mare, walking her quickly over to the road and back to the barn. 

Erwin watches Levi bend Remy into his right lead canter. He turns his head to Eren who is standing on his left and staring. He says loudly, “Do you think you should maybe go help her?”

He shakes his head as the kid runs off too fast after her and spooks the mare. He hears gravel get kicked up by her hooves in the driveway and Erna cursing and shouting, “Don’t run up behind the horses! The fuck is wrong with you?”

After one fence, Levi rides Remy back over to Erwin at a brisk, flicky trot, only to stop in front of the concerned man and ask, “Where’d you get this fucker? He’s nice.”

Erwin smiles broadly, because he thinks the same. “Auction in France, actually.”

Levi whistles and pats the horse on its neck. Remy tosses his head, silky well-tended forelock waving in the breeze. “You fancy bastard.” He starts asking more questions about who he’s bred by, how high he’ll jump, and whether he’s had any injuries and Erwin is happy to answer everything, finally settling into easy conversation with the terse twenty-four year old. 

Back at the barn, Eren is walking quick to keep pace with Erna who doesn’t stop walking to unfasten the horse’s bridle. She has all the buckles undone by the time they hit the washroom and her hand shoots out to grab a halter from a hook to replace the bridle while Eren chatters at her. “Did you know he was only one of seven people to run clean at the Grand Prix in Germany last year?”

“I know everything, Eren,” she sighs, like she’d much rather _not_ know everything.

“He’s _so_ good.”

Erna reaches for Noel’s halter and slips it over her face. She throws her saddle pad into a pile near the washing machine, hangs her bridle on a hook and gets the mare walking again. Eren follows after her. “He earned more than any other rider in Europe this year.”

“Amazing,” she says sarcastic and exaggerated. Following the rankings is a thing she has to do to be good at her job, but she could not actually care less about who is who and how supposedly great they are. All professional show jumpers are just spoiled brats with too much money and time. When Eren catches up with her, she hands the lead rope to him and stops, telling him, “Keep her walking until I get back, don’t let her drink,” and she makes a turn to open the stall door to her right to retrieve the next horse Erwin wants Levi to ride. 

As the door opens, she gasps, and asks the brown, formerly grey horse in front of her, “When did you roll in the mud?”

He does not answer. She tells the horse stubbornly dragging his feet how fucking rude he is as she hurries him to the washroom, smacking his flank to get him marching. She makes her arms sore with brushing him so hard. He leans and balks away from her when she goes for the curry comb and she scolds him, “Well if you weren’t so fucking dirty…”

She’s desperate enough to enlist help and tells Mike to grab a brush. He tells her he expects to get paid extra at the end of the day. As soon as the horse, Foxfire, an import on loan from a trainer in Ireland, looks presentable enough to her, Erna rushes him to the indoor to lunge and warm up. He flips his head and pins his ears at her for the aggressive treatment and she gives him a quick smack on the nose, telling him, “Not today.”

The clock high on the wall of the indoor riding ring makes Erna hiss, “Shit,” as she clips the lunge line to Fox’s bridle and shoos him away from her, picking a long whip off of the ground, and sending him out into a big, trotting circle with her at the center. She keeps her eyes on the second hand for one minute and clucks her tongue, urging the tall, well muscled Oldenburg stallion into a canter. He bucks and takes off at a dead run, making Erna brace against the lunge line. She leans her weight against his and snaps the whip, saying, “Get it all out, shithead.”

He twists his back into the turn, bucking and kicking out with his powerful back legs. His hoof flies inches away from her face and provides her with a momentary shot of adrenaline, her first, but probably not the last of the day. She braces her weight against his, planting one foot in front of the other, knees bent, waving the whip at him every so often, urging him to get all of the bad attitude and excess energy out. By the time he seems to be too exhausted to buck anymore, Erna checks the clock and shrieks. It has been far more than ten minutes since Levi probably finished his ride with Remy. 

When she pulls him in toward her, Fox tries to rub his sweaty face on her shoulder. She smacks him lightly on his big forehead, whining about him being gross as she drags him to the mounting block in the corner. She picks up the white, blue trimmed, quilted saddle pad she had set there and she positions it on Fox’s back before draping his girth over his shoulders. Even as her fingers twist into his dark grey mane flecked through with silver highlights, he lifts a hoof, tenses his muscles and is already moving as she swings a leg over his back.

She doesn’t even squeeze him with her naked calves before he takes off, powering off his hind legs and leaping out onto the gravel outside. Erna pulls him up with short, forceful yanks on each rein, squeezing tight with her thighs desperately trying to keep herself from falling off of his back. 

She gets him stopped, growls at him to quit being a dick, and releases pressure on his mouth in degrees, squeezing the reins in her hands, giving and taking, until she has his attention and feels him soften like he’s in a mood to cooperate. She risks asking him to move and he jumps at the chance, literally, breaking into a run from a standstill. She keeps him under control thanks to well developed inner thigh muscles and a stranglehold on the bit and lets him run along the grass lining the driveway all the way from the arena to the east end of the driveway where she pulls him up to a stop at the edge of the road. Fox rears up on his hind legs to show how little he appreciates being asked to stop, so that Erna has to lean forward and reach for his mane up by his ears until he decides to settle back down to earth. When he does, she pulls hard on the reins and leans back, making him back up a few steps. She growls, “Could you please try to not be so fucking awful today?” 

Levi and Erwin, who had been deep in an involved conversation about the designer of the jumping course that’s set up in the field Levi was just riding, stop to watch from horseback and the ground respectively. Fox and Erna begin a clipped, short strided, high-necked walk across the road to join them on the grass on the other side. Fox starts to trot the last few steps and Erna rips on his mouth with the reins while saying, “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” to her boss who responds by asking what she’s doing. 

Mystified at his unexpected calmness, she says, “I thought you’d be pissed. It’s been almost half an hour.”

“Has it?” Levi asks. 

Erna looks at both of them, mouth wide open, because normally if Erwin says he wants horses less than ten minutes apart, he really means less than five minutes apart, and thirty minutes is much, much more than five. The famous rider from Ireland smirks at her and she realizes that essentially what he’s looking at is a petite, sweaty stablehand sat bareback atop a very expensive sporthorse as if it were a backyard pony. She becomes suddenly very self conscious of her jean shorts with their dirt-stained lace cutouts at the sides, and her sweat-drenched tank top. Levi dismounts Remy and Erna is about to swing her right leg over Fox’s side to do the same, but instead of taking his saddle over to the new horse, the short, impressively fit rider with a deep voice that makes Erna’s knees weak, turns, crosses his arms and nods at her as he says, “Let’s see him go.”

“Oh, I wasn’t--” Erna starts to say. 

Erwin is quick to say, “Not without a helmet.”

That’s the first that Erna realizes she isn’t wearing one. She touches her hair. She always wears a helmet. She’s seen too many people taken out of rings on stretchers to scorn her helmet. Levi reaches for the clip on his and takes it off gladly. He walks over to Fox’s shoulder and holds it up to her. She feels her cheeks get hot and hopes like hell that it looks like she’s just winded from that harrowing ride between here and the indoor. She takes the helmet, noting that it’s a Samshield, and is expensive as fuck. She rests it between her legs while she reaches up and pulls at her hair tie, lowering the base of her knotted, messy ponytail. She says awkwardly, “I have a big head.”

He is quick to quip back, “They tell me the same thing.”

It fits and it doesn’t smell like sweat and mildew like a lot of riders (especially men’s) helmets do. Erna runs her finger under the chin strap and looks down at the two men. “You’re sure?”

Levi crosses his arms and says, “You’re already up there.”

She doesn’t have to ask Erwin. His answer is predictable to her by now. You do what the rider wants. If he asks you to get off that horse and do a fucking handstand, then you do it. 

So she warns them as Foxfire feels her brain gears move and start to think about running, her muscles in her legs unconsciously twitching and tightening against his back and he starts to prance, pinning his ears back and pulling his head down and up again trying to wrest the reins from her control, “He isn’t a big fan of me right now.”

Levi mutters, “Even better,” to himself. He likes to see what a horse is like when they’re in a mood. It gives him a good idea of what it will be like when he has to handle it in a bright, loud arena. And then, with a leap, Fox bolts.

Erna tries for a full second to pull him up, but he stretches his neck out so far and moves forward so hard that all she can safely do is tangle her fingers in his mane and let him run. The wind whistles in her ears. For six strides he feels coiled under her like a spring under too much pressure, then he starts to stretch out and lengthen and relax with the freedom to run. Erna keeps her eyes on the tree line, trying to encourage him to only run straight ahead, until she can get him under control. She can’t handle any turns at this speed. Fox has other ideas when he spots a trellis jump, a natural brush jump with three foot tall hedges between the rose trellis standards and two wooden rails set over those at a challenging four foot three inches in height. 

The expression beeline is not enough for how Fox locks onto the jump from ten strides away and gallops. His hooves pound the ground with frantic purpose and Erna inches her hands up his neck, crouching down without slouching her back, lowering her center of gravity as he eats up the soft ground. He’s going impossibly fast, but time slows down for her as she huffs, “Three.” 

Fox stretches his neck out again and meets no resistance from the bit in his mouth. Erna’s fingers stay tangled in an equal amount of rein and mane, trusting him to spot his own distance and balance himself without getting pulled up by her, because without a saddle and stirrups, she can’t do much. “Two.”

Her thigh muscles and her calves clench hard as she mouths the word ‘one,’ and the muscles of the animal underneath her similarly pause and clench and he lifts himself onto his hind legs and leaps. Erna pulls her knees up so that she won’t get left behind, leans forward into the jump, stays centered as best she can, and starts to sit up as Fox’s front end starts to come down. She’s tipped back when he hits the ground. Instead of bracing herself, she grabs more mane and pushes him forward after landing, knowing that if he gets a chance to pause he will celebrate his victory with a buck or two or three, and she cannot handle a buck right now. If she lets it happen, at this speed, with this big a horse under her, she’ll have her first fall in twelve years. Her brow wrinkles in a sour expression at the thought of ruining her streak with this absolute bullshit and in front of a man who gives her angry lust feels with the sound of his voice.

Having won a small battle and only receiving the signal to keep going from his rider, Fox’s attitude starts to change, and he comes back into Erna’s hands, softening his mouth for her and looking for some input, seeming to ask, “What do you want to do next?”

When he’s settled down, Erna slows him to a halt and catches her breath. She readjusts her position, settling herself just behind Fox’s shoulders again. Levi and Erwin are off to her right, so she picks up her right rein and gives Fox a poke with her left heel, making him pick up his canter and head for a nice long line of a vertical to an oxer combo. Fox is a dream to ride on the grass when he’s in a good mood and he makes the jumps feel effortless. Aside from hitting the ground hard on the landings of the high jumps, and thus hitting her horse’s back hard, Erna feels comfortable when she’s in control of the bit in his mouth, almost as much as she would be on a well trained schooling pony. She steers him over every jump in the field, a few of them twice as she decides to circle back and go over them from the opposite direction. Fox never touches a rail or misses a stride. He does best with as little feedback as possible and Erna is secure enough to keep a light hand. She points him at the jumps and only gets firm with him whenever he’s starting to get too full of himself and act out like the big ego 

She trots back when her legs feel like jello, but it’s worth it for the way Levi’s light grey eyes glint. Erwin’s face is drained. He gets that look when she does shit like this. It isn’t the first time she’s galloped a horse bareback over a serpentining course of jumps. She rolls her eyes at him for being a mom, and then Levi says, “Could you take ‘im over that brush fence again?” and her spine straightens. She begins to pick her reins back up until he goes, “I’m fuckin’ with you. I don’t know how many extra lives you have, but don’t waste one of ‘em showin’ me this beast.”

He turns to Erwin and asks where the horse is from and Erwin answers, “Ireland,” and begins to explain the horse’s breeding and which trainer’s barn he’s on loan from. 

Levi, obviously having ceased to listen, gives Fox a rub along the crest of his neck, which the horse is grateful for, stretching his neck out and leaning toward the man as he says, “We know our own.”

He takes the horse’s reins as Fox turns his head for a pat and Erna thinks she’s in love. She’s certainly, at least, ‘very aware’ of how good Levi looks in his white polo, white riding breeches, and black knee high riding boots. His thigh muscles are so defined and he has so much upper body strength - not common in riders. He must work out aside from riding every day. And just as quickly as she has that thought, she’s fucking bitter that he has time for shit like that. She would kill for the time to take care of herself like that. The last time she got to go to the gym was when one of her roommates, years ago, got a part-time job cleaning the locker rooms at the local gym and could sneak her in for free. 

He gives Fox’s nose a rub and then says, “He has a good way of goin’. I don’t need to see anymore.”

And that fucking voice, she thinks. And that horrible, beautiful accent. She hates his handsome face. He’s rich and famous and probably a spoiled little shit and she just wants...

Erwin asks Levi if he wants to ride a few more. They have five other horses that are CSI qualified. Levi gives Erna a look that’s admiring and intriguing and makes her get literally taken aback at how her heart seems to physically leap from her chest to her throat. After giving her a good long look that makes Erna feel terribly awkward and hot and red, Levi turns back to face Erwin, picks his cardboard cup of tea from Wawa off of a tree stump, his fingers tented over the rim. He takes a long sip and finally answers, “I couldn’t give a fuck, honestly,” though it’s with more candor than anger, as if he feels like he can confide in Erwin that he couldn’t give a fuck.

Erwin’s face falls before it returns to the resigned expression that Erna sees him wear often. Then Levi says, “You ’ave a nice farm. This your only one?”

“Yes…”

“How far do you travel for the show season?”

“Usually we do all of the FEI grand prix we can around here and in upstate New York, then the WEF in Florida in the winter. The horses can go further, if that’s what you’re going for, it’s just a cost benefit… consideration.”

Levi nods, and he turns away and looks across the road at the fields on the other side where horses are grazing. “Couldn’t understand why Kenny wanted me to stop here.” He trails off, watching the distance, scanning the tree line of scraggly pines and oaks that cling stubbornly to the edge of the plateau at the top of an impossibly steep incline that cuts through the horses pastures. “This is the most green space I’ve seen in this godforsaken country. Everything else ‘as been three hundred acres of stadium lighted arenas and imported warmbloods.” He sips his tea and nods in the direction of the two newly pregnant broodmares grazing across the road, and he asks, “What do you breed here?”

“Thoroughbreds,” Erwin says quietly, his eyes flashing with hope. 

Levi nods, like he suspected based on the conformation and look of the mares. “Underappreciated breed.”

“We have two foals this year. We raise them, train them, and then compete with them, but it’s just me right now. No trainer or rider to show them.”

Levi turns around and tilts his chin at Erna, “She isn’t qualified?”

Erwin frowns. Erna speaks up quickly, “I only school.”

It isn’t Erwin’s restriction. If Erna asked, he’d enter her in any class she wanted on any horse.

But Erna doesn’t compete. And he’s learned not to ask her to.

Levi takes a sip of his tea, then tips his cup, gesturing at Remy still standing politely and quietly with Erwin, saying, “I’ve seen this horse before. I watched his round in the Triple Crown Stake in January, with that kid on his back…” His brow creases as he tries to remember the name. Erwin fills in for him, “Jean Kirschtein.”

“Right.” Levi takes a sip of tea and then finishes his thought, “And she rides a lot better’an that swollen prick.”

Erwin presses his lips into a thin line. He can feel Erna’s discomfort from ten feet away as she hides her face in Fox’s neck.

“I’ll do the season,” Levi finally says, “then I’ll fuck off back home.”

“I… Wait... Really?” Erwin looks like he can barely breathe, and Erna worries he might be having a dissociative episode. She would get off her horse and help him, but she’s pretty sure her legs are out of commission.

Levi nods at her boss as if it’s no big deal, like he didn’t just literally save their show year and their asses. He mutters, “Rather go back now, but I’m sentenced to a year.”

Erwin doesn’t seem to hear him. He asks again, “You’re _sure_?”

Levi doesn’t directly address him, just says, “Gonna need a place to stay.”

Fox starts pulling Erna toward the barn, sensing that they’re done here and not seeing the point in staying where there’s no chance of being given grain or doing more jumps. Erwin seems to wake up and follows with Remy’s reins held loosely in his hand. “Oh, um, there’s a Marriott in town a couple miles away, but Erna can help get you set up with a rental right away.”

Levi points at the tail end of the horse and girl walking away from them. “That’s Erna?”

“Oh, yes,” Erwin says, feeling badly about not having introduced her.

“She your daughter or something?”

She turns around and shouts, “Yes.”

Erwin sighs and shakes his head. “No. She’s just worked here a long time.”

“Too long!” she shouts over her shoulder, and, sensing her inattention, Fox breaks into a bouncy trot, better for getting to his stall and grain faster.

“Would you mind givin’ me her number then,” Levi asks as the horse and rider in front of them trot around the bend of the driveway and disappear. “Seems to be the only one around here who knows what they’re doing,” he says as he unlocks his phone. “No offense.”

“None taken,” Erwin says, not that he would say anything if he did take any. 

Erna only slows Fox down as they near the large main doors of the barn, and she shouts, “Someone come walk out this horse!” because walking is out of the question for her right now. 

She swings her leg over his back and slides down Fox’s side as slowly as she can, but still her knees and ankles hurt with the shock of the impact on the hard gravel pad in front of the barn. She grits her teeth and hisses, lifting and bending one knee and ankle and then the other as she tries to bend and shake the pain out of her joints. 

Nobody comes out to grab the horse. 

She finds all three of her new coworkers in the washroom huddled around the washing machine while Mike pulls the shoes from the last horse he needs to work on for today. Erna limps just inside the doorway separating the washroom from the aisle of the barn, and says, at a volume that is loud but will not spook the horses, “Would one of you nerds take this horse?”

Eren rushes to turn around and scurry over, but Erna holds her hand up, freezes him in place, and points at Mikasa. She curls her finger, says, “This is Fox. He can be a demon. Don’t give him any slack in the lead rope and literally do not let him anywhere near any mares. Okay?”

Eren protests as Mikasa takes the reins, “I could--”

Erna cuts him off. “You’re not strong enough and if you say one more word about it, I’m gonna stab you with a pitchfork and throw you in the manure spreader.”

Mike chimes in from the crossties in the wash stall, “I’d take her seriously.”

Mikasa walks away with Fox, who immediately tries to test her by giving her a shove with his shoulder that doesn’t jostle her even a centimeter. After that small test, he decides to behave himself and walks quietly alongside her into the aisle of the barn, drooping his nose to the aisle to check that there aren’t any stray pieces of hay on the ground. 

Erna is about to let herself stop and take a breath, but then she notices the voice of a british announcer talking about a water obstacle in a jumping course, and she looks at Eren and Armin, standing in front of the washing machine, and asks, “What the hell are you doing?” Eren steps to his right and reveals his phone sitting on the washer, playing a video of some Grand Prix somewhere. 

He tells her, “I was showing them how good Levi is. I’ve watched this video like forty times.”

Erna rolls her eyes and sighs long and loud. She limps over, and says, “Well he’s riding for us now, so it’s Mr. Ackerman unless he says different.”

She picks her silver travel mug of coffee up off of the washing machine and watches the video play out. He’s just starting his ride on a Hanoverian horse that Erna’s seen before named something German that she can’t spell off the top of her head. It belongs to Mark Gold, a famous American trainer now based in Germany who is too old for riding anymore, but still runs a barn and places million dollar horses with famous riders. 

She tunes Eren out as he jumps up and down and squeals. Her eyes follow the Hanoverian horse whose name she can never spell right, but she can recognize it by its particular build and markings. 

She watches Levi’s hands and arms on the tiny screen. Eren starts shaking Armin by the shoulders. She watches him soften his hold on the horse’s mouth just before the jump, giving it room to move and the confidence to get over the 3’9” wide oxer that disqualified nearly every other rider at the start of their run. 

She knows how the competition ends. With him winning $200,000. She does some quick mental math and figures she would need to work seven days a week, three hundred and sixty five days a year, for fifteen and a half years to earn that much money. Not even to save up that much money. That would take much longer. 

The real life, life size version of the tiny figure she’s watching onscreen follows Erwin and Remy into the wash stall. Eren rushes to take Remy. Armin gets back to feeding the horses lunch. Erna still stands there entranced by the screen of Eren’s phone until Erwin asks Levi what time he’d like to meet up tomorrow. His voice breaks her out of her distraction and Erna moves Eren’s phone to the sink and starts throwing the pile of used saddle pads at her feet into the washing machine while she listens to the Levi explain that he hasn’t slept in nearly forty-eight hours. He drove up straight from Florida without stopping. 

Erwin, greatly concerned, asks, “Do you want a ride to the hotel?”

“I’m fine. I’ll sleep for a good twenty hours and be a hundred percent tomorrow. I want a look at the farm first.”

Erna grabs a lead rope off of the hook near the sink. After throwing it over her shoulders, letting the loose end wrap around her left arm and taking up the clip in her right hand, she’s ready to go back to work. She still has twelve horses to get turned out and chores that she’s behind on now and she has to fucking hurry if she doesn’t want to be working two extra hours that she won’t get paid for. Erwin says, “Of course,” and starts to turn around to lead him back out to the main barn.

Mike, from his position bent over a horse’s hoof, says, “Why don’t you have Erna show him around?” To tease Erwin, he adds, “She probably knows this farm better than you by now.”

Erwin frowns, but Levi is already walking toward his most important stablehand who looks like she’s just seen a ghost. He asks her, “Are you alright with that?”

“Um, yeah,” she says slowly, unraveling the lead rope from her arms and laying it on the washing machine next to her. Levi nods in the direction of Eren’s phone where his ride at the International Grand Prix in Amsterdam is still playing. He says, “That was a good horse.”

Erna picks up her coffee mug and winces at what Erwin’s sure must be her aching legs as she turns to step into the door frame and outside into the sun. He can hear her ask, “How do you say it’s name?” before they’re out of earshot and he is marching his way over to where Mike is trying to act like he is innocently just finishing his work, bent over a horse’s back hoof, giving it a good file. 

And he asks his boyfriend, in no uncertain terms, “What was that?”

“What?”

“You know what.”

“Trying to land my girl a sugar daddy,” he says, as if it is very obvious and not at all a problem. 

“Don’t -” Erwin sputters, “Don’t act like --” He sighs. He hates having to say it. “You _know_ that isn’t a good idea.”

“Why not?”

“Mike,” he groans. 

“What?”

“I had to stop buying hay from the Rhodes family down the road because she had a crush on one of the boys who delivers it.”

“Wasn’t great hay anyway,” Mike sniffs. 

“Do you even _remember_ how that ended?”

Mike stands and shrugs, but with a sheepish look, like he remembers exactly how he had to drive out in the middle of the night and tow Erwin’s truck out of a ditch after the boy ran her off the road. Still don’t know why. Must have been one hell of a breakup. 

Erwin fixes him with a hard look, “And the time she took a liking to that vet tech?”

“Ah, yeah,” Mike reaches for the back of his neck, “That one was a bit of a scene.”

“I still can’t get anyone but Hange to work on the horses,” Erwin deadpans. Then he reminds Mike, “Oh, and the five month long thing with the boy at the feed store?”

“I still don’t think that one was her fault,” he mutters reticently. 

Erwin frowns. He knows Mike thinks of her as his own, that he means well, but he reminds him, “I need this, Mike. This could save this place. Please don’t risk it by encouraging Erna to do whatever the hell she does to get men so twisted up.”

Mike frowns right back, and says gravely, “I’m sick of seeing her barely live paycheck to paycheck.”

“We can’t all pull big clients like Jim Willis.”

Mike’s face changes abruptly, to an expression Erwin never sees on him - anger. He points at Erwin with the hammer in his hand, and says, “ _Don’t_ do that.”

But Erwin can’t stop himself or his satisfaction with Mike’s reaction. “How are his horses?”

Mike shoves past him, out the door, steps up into the back of his truck and Erwin hears the hammer make an explosion of noise as it’s thrown at the rack of tools in there. 

Erwin drives the nail in the coffin. “How are his students?”

Mike won’t answer, won’t even look at him. Erwin wishes he would. He wishes he would defend the decision to not tank his livelihood by cutting ties with a man who would ruin his name if he dared to drop him as a client. He wishes there were something defensible about it. He wishes he could reconcile Mike’s decision with his love and respect for him. Erwin waits a couple seconds to see if he wants to say anything, to watch Mike’s shoulders rise and fall inches every deep breath, to make sure he hurt him enough. Then he goes back to the house, and Mike starts loudly, violently cleaning up his tools.

  
  


When Erna asks him how to pronounce that horse’s name, Levi goes, “Oh, fuck if I know.” in his deep voice that vibrates through her. She smiles to herself. She likes the way he talks, not just his voice, she likes that he says ‘fuck’ a lot. It’s a familiar and oft-used word in her vocabulary and makes her feel more comfortable when it flows easily out of his mouth, woven unashamedly into his speech without a single thread of self consciousness. He follows her and asks, “What are we going to look at first?”

She says, “Everything,” and leads him up a twelve foot wide strip of unmowed grass and wildflowers separating the fences of two huge pastures, so large that he can’t even get an eye on any horses that might be in them. 

Her legs feel weak and tired and almost powerless to move. She stretches them as she walks up the steep hill extending her stride more than necessary, feeling the stretch burn through her hamstrings. She feels like an idiot for riding that horse bareback. The strain of holding on with nothing but her legs has left her weakened and tired and distracted by the pain in her quad muscles that are screaming and begging for her to sit down and never move again.

She says, “Fence to the left is the pasture for the two year olds,” pointing at the washed out plateau that splits across the center of the rectangular pasture and smooths out just before the fence. “They have to go up and down that steep cliff to get from where we feed them their grain to where the good grazing is.”

She points to the right as they keep walking up the hill. “That’s the pasture for the retirees.”

She sees the top of the hill and is washed over with relief at the prospect of reaching it and standing still for a moment. Levi looks at the field to the left and the drop from the midpoint of the hill where it eroded and washed out and made a nearly vertical wall of earth to the foot and the fence lining the left half of the driveway. He says, “Horses must be surefooted to survive that every day.”

Erna answers, “Our horses will never let you down on a cross country course.”

He asks, “Where do you raise the yearlings? Bed of hot coals?”

She says absently, “Something like that,” as they near the corners of the two pastures that will mark this edge of the farm.

Levi dislikes being led without an express destination, but he’s interested in the sun-tinted, wiry barn brat in her jean shorts and her mud-stained tank top. He wonders what she would taste like right now, after pulling off a Level 4 jumping course without a saddle like she was hopping on a backyard pony for a trail ride. He wonders what her thigh spasms are like when she’s crashing over the edge of an orgasm, and how hard she would squeeze his head between her legs while he’s making her scream his fucking name. 

He thinks her ass is the only beautiful thing he's seen in this fucking country that he’s always hated, perky and round under her shorts that he wishes were shorter. His eyes keep traveling up, squinting at her narrow waist that looks like it could disappear underneath his fingers, small enough to cover up with the length of his gloved hands. 

Then, as his eyes travel up, he notices the diamond of muscle between her shoulders, turning what would be a concave curve from neck to shoulder into a convex curve over muscle and then to bone. Without thinking, he notices, “Your shoulders are kind of jacked, huh.”

In his defense, they _are_ muscular for a lady. In his defense, he meant it as a commentary on the fact that she must ride fast horses and do a lot of pulling at the bit. In his defense, he normally gets away with saying whatever the fuck he wants and nobody gives him a hard time about it. 

She turns around with her hands on her hips, which Levi sees as the bad omen it is and begins to realize he may have just fucked up.

“Is that how you compliment women in Ireland?” she asks with her pointed little nose scrunched like she just stepped in a manure pile.

“Never said it was a compliment.”

And if he hadn't put his foot in his mouth already… The girl huffs to herself, then goes to rub at her blue eyes stung with sweat and dried with dust, and her fingers bump into the visor of his helmet. She starts like she had forgotten she was wearing it, and she quickly releases the chin strap and throws it at him in an overhand pass to his chest. He catches it and holds it in his hand while he follows her up fifty more feet of incline in tense silence that does not deter him from imagining her dark ponytail wrapped around his fist. Following her through the clover and wildflowers feels like a dream of home that keeps getting punctuated with sharp, pounding nightmares featuring her slender body laid out for him. His eyes narrow on the retreating swagger of her hips. 

Then, annoyingly, she stops and turns around and he can see her face which is still pinched in an unpleasant expression because he commented on her shoulders, which he honestly hadn’t meant were unattractive, but apparently American girls don’t think it’s okay to have muscles. Fucking noted. 

She’s sassy now, all of the sun-kissed, salt and honey and clover-smelling charm gone sour. She puts a hand on her hip and says, “You wanted to see the farm.”

He catches up and turns to look out as she makes a sweeping motion. The walk had felt so short, he didn’t think they would be this high up. The entire farm is sprawled out beneath them, pastures dotted with sun filtering through the puffy white clouds, dappled grey and yellow. Erna points to their left. “We’re at the western border now, the river is the eastern border down there behind that treeline. It also makes up the south border of the farm up there along the edge of the broodmares’ field. The north border is the edge of the foal and yearling fields.”

The huge, grassy pastures for the horses that live their lives outdoors rather than in the main barn form a large horseshoe shape around the half of the farm on one side of the road, keeping the main barn, the main house, the turnout paddocks for the show horses, and the farmhouse for the help, all within its curled arms, seemingly hugging them away from the outside world. Across the road is a kilometer length of open grass dotted by tall jumps, hemmed by trees and water. He breathes the spring air that carries the smell of warm hay, cut and drying, from neighboring farms. 

He scans the view one way and another, focusing in on a herd of three yearlings far off skidding their way down a patch of red shale that cuts through the ground at about the same level as the washed out incline they passed on the way up here. It’s breathtaking, getting a look at the topography of the place from this vantage point. He thinks it looks like an angry god cut a swath across this hill, gouged a curled claw into it and made it bleed flaking rock from a wound dug out of the grass. 

He stands there in silence watching the yearlings, in three slightly different versions of blue-grey coats, probably step siblings. They slow at the drop off in elevation, straighten out their front legs and lean back on their haunches as they slide on the smooth rocks to get to the bottom of the hill, the bottom of the field, to rush the fence and harass a passing stablehand for grain.

Levi feels at home here, where horses are obviously expected to be tough and hold their own, where there’s acres of green space to gallop over, and a barn brat who’s easy on the eyes and looking at the same view, with at least a little wonder no matter how many times he’s sure she’s climbed to this spot. 

He breaks the silence when he’s had a good enough look around and feels like he could do with a good nap after days of wakefulness. “So now I’ve gotten you pissed off at me, how long am I gonna rot in that hotel?”

He turns and catches her smirk, and he notices that there’s a slight wrinkle, a “smile line,” but only on one side of her mouth as if she has never let a full smile grace her face with symmetry. She says, “I’ll have a list of places for you to look at tomorrow morning.”

“Thanks.” 

“Do you want to see anything else?”

He wants to see her face down and ass up on the fucking ground. He isn't even a fan of fucking outdoors, but something about her makes him feel an uncharacteristic hunger for it. 

“I'm sure I'll get the feel of it as I go.”

She nods, satisfied, then starts back down the hill. As they pass a section of fence overgrown by a carpet of honeysuckle vines, Levi slows down and lets her get ahead of him and he takes his phone out of his pocket. 

He unlocks it and it opens to that video he took of her jumping that Oldenburg stallion earlier. He sends it to Farlan with a swipe and opens his camera for what he originally intended and holds the phone up, trying to get the best angle to take a picture of her backside. He plans to also send that to Farlan, because the only fun part about being in this fucking country is taking pictures of the girls and making his friend at home jealous.

He gets distracted by the pounding sound of hooves running over ground. He turns in the direction of the ruckus and sees what he would describe as a ‘gaggle’ of five awkward two year old horses galloping with their large hooves attached to skinny ankles, disproportionate in their awkward phase of growth. They each pull themselves up, hopping, to a stop as they near the fence and Erna. Levi flicks his thumb over to record a video and he watches her wave the young horses away. When one of them, the only chestnut one among bays, charges the fence and cranes his neck out to pin his ears back at her and toss his head with a snort, she takes a swing at him with her right fist, droning unaffected, “Fuck off, Danger,” as if at an annoying little brother.

Levi smirks. “Danger?”

“He used to be Derek,” she says, as she continues down the hill and ignores the horses prancing and fretting after her along the fence. “He tried to climb the wall of a stall when he was in the barn getting his six month vaccinations. Got a huge gash in his forehead trying to do it, like the disaster that he is.” And Levi sees the scar she points at, denting a diagonal jagged divot from his right temple to the center of his forehead. “Hence, Danger.”

He keeps recording. “What are the rest of their names?”

“The one with the ugly face is Deena, the clunky one is Dizzy, the dainty one is Darla, and that roman-nosed bitch is Drama. And they are all idiots and they are all a pain in my ass.”

Levi cannot tell, as she introduces them, which one is which. The four bay mares all look exactly the same with the same coloring, same markings, and same build as far as he can see. They follow them down the hill, crowding the gate at the bottom and nickering and whinnying at the girl they think is supposed to feed them right about now as she walks away toward the barn. She tells them to fuck off as well. Levi feels he might be a little smitten, though he’s sure he’ll get over it after he fucks her and gets it out of his system. 

He emails the video of her with the two year olds to Farlan with the caption, “manager at the Smith farm.”

She doesn’t say goodbye to him when he stops at the right side of his car. She walks back into the dark of the long, concrete block stable without a word or even a wave. 

“Tch.”

He opens the car door, moves to get in, realize there’s no steering wheel, curses, throws his helmet onto the floor of the rental car, slams the door, and walks around to the other side. His phone buzzes with a response from Farlan, that says, “Where are you????????”

He leans against the car and types, “fucking New Jersey”.

A moment later he receives, “I’m buying a plane ticket right now. How long do you think Kenny will let me take off without kickin me out on my arse?”

He wants to believe that his best friend is joking. He texts back after a long time looking at the screen. “Don’t.”

He tosses his phone onto the passenger seat on the opposite side of the car than what he’s used to, and he gets in and types the name of the hotel into the car’s touch screen as he turns the ignition and backs out to turn around and head out the north end of the driveway.

The two year olds chase his car until the fence runs out. He keeps it slow, so that they can keep up, makes a bet with himself about which one is the fastest. Danger, the lone red one of the herd, gets to the opposite corner of the field first, skidding to a stop, pushing at the wire fence with his chest. 

Erna walks down the main aisle of the barn toward the middle of the length of it where there’s a panel in the ceiling that can be moved in order to drop down hay bales from the loft. Mikasa and Armin are already there, separating sections of hay and scurrying to get them to each horse’s stall. She asks one of them to go throw some hay to the two year olds as well because they’re “being extra,” then she walks out the side door of the barn, making for the shortest route down to the house. It’s past noon. She is no longer being paid to work. She strolls home to soak her legs in a bathtub full of hot water and epsom salt for the rest of her life. 


	6. chapter five/six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so, um, the chapters are gonna get numbered weirdly, because this was originally written as a long series of drabbles and ... well... it's hard to sew together into a more "novel" format. I've already renamed and numbered all my docs twice. I'm not ready to do it again. so, to make all of this easier for me to keep straight, enjoy chapter 5/6.

Levi drops his single, tightly packed bag right in the doorway of his room and strips off his clothes as he walks through his hotel suite, getting the collar of his sweaty polo unbuttoned and ripping it away to drop it on the arm of a chair. His knee high riding boots and socks get thrown to the front hall’s floor, his white breeches are peeled off in the bedroom, and his underwear discarded at the foot of the bed on which he passes the fuck out. He pits the giant bed like a heavy stone tossed into the middle of a fluffy white comforter.

He tries like hell to resist waking up, and stubbornly keeps his eyes shut and tries like hell to think of nothing. He gives up around five in the afternoon. Tragically, he’s finally well rested, if groggy, and annoyed about continuing to fuck up his sleep cycle which has been fucked since he stepped off a plane in West Palm Beach where the heat and the insects drove him to madness. He started off looking at each barn Kenny had lined up for him to give a trial run, but only for a day each, not a week like the old man blocked out for him. Levi hates idleness and is a quick and decisive judge. He gets that from the old man, so he doesn’t know why Kenny thought things would work out any different.

Some places he declined to even get on a horse, because fuck it, no horse in the world could make him tolerate that southern heat and humidity for months at a time during the show season. He forgets where exactly he broke his itinerary and started blowing past the farms of famous trainers and breeders in his rental car, speeding up the highways along the east coast of his birth country until it started to feel like the heat was breaking to a balmy breeze. 

Kenny doesn't know and won't know for a while if Levi can help it. He likely still thinks his nephew is in Florida, rubbing elbows with the coach of the USET, riding Warmbloods over freshly painted jumps, and drinking mimosas. Levi is avoiding calling. He’s avoided contact altogether since saying goodbye and good luck to the man who raised him. 

The Smith farm had barely rated mention when they talked about this year he’s being forced to spend in this fucking country. He almost skipped that to go straight to upstate New York where there are more famous trainers and more expensive horses and a lot of boujee shit. 

He reaches for his phone, by just extending an arm and sweeping it over the bed until he feels something smooth and hard and heavy. He clutches the sides of his phone in his fingertips and holds the screen over his face. It plays the video where that cute barn manager was telling him the names of the two year old horses. He pauses, and sweeps his fingers over the screen, zooming in on her. Suddenly there's a stabbing pain behind the corner of his eye that makes him drop the phone. He grits his teeth before reaching for the landline. When the concierge answers the first words out of his mouth are, “Do you have any tea?” Then he remembers that he needs to try to go back to sleep in a matter of hours. “I mean… fuck…” 

“Umm… Is english breakfast okay?”

Levi’s hand hits his face. He hates this country so much. His palm drags down from his forehead to cover the receiver of the phone so that he can shout, “FUCK!” 

A concerned, “Sir?” rings at him from the phone and he deadpans, “That’s fine.”

He gets himself dressed in a tee and sweats, cleans up his clothes, but does not unpack. Not here. Not today. He isn’t staying longer than one night. 

Clearly nobody drinks tea here. He’s can tell because he’s brought a cup of lukewarm water on a saucer and a fucking lipton. He won’t even let the girl who brought it get away before he’s asking for something to redeem this. A beer? A fucking steak? And she smiles apologetically and tells him he’ll have to call room service again.

He lowers his eyelids and deadpans, “But you’re here now.”

“I know, it’s stupid, I’m sorry,” she chirps, and giggles at him. 

He gives her a look up and down, settles on her hazel eyes, thinking she isn’t half bad, then follows the direction of her eyes to his wrist and his eleven thousand dollar Longines watch. 

“Aye, feck off then.”

He lets the door slam. Then he smacks his forehead, realizing he forgot to check something, he opens the door again real quick and shouts after her, “Oi, do you tip in this country?” but she’s already gone.

“Fuck,” he hisses to himself. He sets the insult to tea itself on the fucking console near the door, opposed to the idea of even touching it, much less letting it near his mouth. 

He hates traveling. He hates this hotel next to a fucking chain restaurant and a car dealership on a highway. The carpet needs a deep clean and the bathroom smells like mildew and nicotine. 

He calls Farlan up on Skype to distract himself. It’s good to see his face, smiling, excited, the bar of a pub behind him, shouting over the noise on his end, “One second, you just won me a quid,” then he yells, “IZ!”

And their mutual best friend, Isabel, pops into frame from the bottom of the screen, looking up at where Farlan’s holding the phone with her little red pigtails and bright green eyes. She punches Farlan on the arm and says, “It doesn’t count if you phone him first!”

“He skyped me! And it’s before eight! I was right! Pay up!”

“Fucking christ,” Levi sighs to himself. 

Farlan refocuses. “Don’t worry, I bought a plane ticket, so your codependent arse will see me in person soon.”

Levi winces. “You didn’t.”

“Of course I did. I need to come meet my future wife.”

“Oh my god.”

Isabel shouts from off screen now, “OoOooOh, a _new_ future wife?”

“This is the one, I mean it,” he yells back indignantly.

“Farlan,” Levi groans, rubbing his temples. “Please don’t.”

“What?” he asks innocently. “I’ll give you a week to get settled, obviously. Then I just want to look at the barn you’re gonna ride with and get to know your new manager.”

“I’m fucking _working_ , Farlan.” He’s supposed to be anyway. 

“And I am concerned for my friend and am coming to check up on him in his new working conditions. I need to make sure the environment is wholesome and up to our rigorous standards.” He can hear Isabel cackling in the background. 

There’s no reasoning with him when he gets like this. Levi regrets sending him that video. He just rubs the bridge of his nose and says, “Bring Iz so that I don’t have to babysit you...” he’s about to hang up, because they’re drinking and it’s impossible to talk to them like this unless he is drunk too, then he remembers, “Oi, don’t tell Kenny.”

“Oops.”

He looks at Farlan’s wide, guilty eyes. “You didn’t.”

“To my defense, he was literally standin’ there while I watched the video you sent.’”

Levi wants to scream, but he takes a deep breath. He asks, “What was his reaction?”

“Didn’t say anything now that you mention it.”

“Fuck…”

When he finally gets off the phone with Farlan, Levi tents his fingers over his brows, eyes squinting in existential pain. Does he call his uncle right away and explain himself? Or does he simply wait to get the call and take his verbal beating?

He shakes his head and decides, at least for now, that he doesn’t give a fuck. The old man isn’t here. He can’t hurt him anyway. What does he need to care for? If he needs to be exiled here for a year he may as well try to enjoy being free from under the bastard’s thumb.

He needs dinner and he needs to pass the fuck out for the night, but after finding the hotel gym and doing a quick ninety minute workout, showering, ordering room service, and turning out the lights again, he still can’t manage sleep. He groans and growls about it in the king size bed. He’s always had trouble sleeping, but he can usually get four to six hours a night. Traveling always fucks him up like this. Days of napping for ten hours and then tossing and turning in bed all night, sweating, trying to drink himself to sleep. Insomnia is a fucking bitch. 

  


……………………………………………………………………………  


Erna is sitting cross-legged on the floor, leaned against her mattress, papers scattered around her in piles, post it notes placed in corners of pages, a different colored pen behind each ear, and nothing but cloudless night sky out her window. She’s finally finished collecting the dates and prize lists of every possible relevant horse show in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New York, for the next six months. She pulls her laptop into her lap and adds the last few shows to a spreadsheet. 

She only has two hobbies, one is horses, the other is this. Both of her hobbies also happen to be her job. Maybe she’s lucky like that. Maybe she just never had time to develop a taste for any activities outside of work. It remains that she is a numbers and details and facts kinda gal. She loves a good chart. The invention of the filtered search is a gift from god. The numbers she gets to deal with as Erwin lets her take more responsibilities are a solid, fixed, never abstract comfort. If she just keeps close track of them, she can at least know that that one thing is reliable. 

Chaos is all around her on this farm. It isn’t literally manifesting as a crisis per day, but it has built a paranoia in her.

If the foals escape from their pasture in an unforeseen way one day? Then that could happen literally any day. Any moment. It’s the knowledge of what could happen, having seen so much, but never being able to know when any of it might be coming. 

But she _knows_ that they’re two bags short on Cavalor this month and they haven’t changed the amount any of the horses are eating. So she needs to tell Armin and Eren to stop over-feeding. 

The door off behind her left shoulder opens and startles the fuck out of her for a fraction of a second before her brain catches up to her body and tells her it's just one of her roommates. Eren’s head appears in the crack of her door, Mikasa behind him. 

Erna, in as deeply cold and impatient a tone as she can achieve, says, “What did I say?”

“Huh? Oh! Knock. Right. Sorry.”

She motions, with a tilt of her head, toward the hunting rifle hanging above her mattress, and she goes, “That thing is loaded, and I suffer from anxiety. Is that enough to get you to remember next time?” which is a lie, but she swears they've been doing this too fucking much and she’s at the end of her rope. She hates locking her door. The lock sticks and it's a pain in her ass, however small a pain. 

This sort of forced socialization has never been a problem for her before. Her room is apart from the other two bedrooms, at the bottom of the stairs. There is no space outside of it that invites hanging out. There's no common area on the first floor, just a landing with some coat hooks, a door to the garage, and a door to her room. People pass by it. They do not invade her fucking privacy as often as these kids who peek in at what she's doing and go, “We're bored.”

She turns back around, after making sure she added that last show date to her spreadsheet, and says, “I'm not surprised. There isn't shit to do here.”

“Where do you go for fun?” Eren whines.

“I don't.” That's also a lie. She just doesn't want to take the time to tell them where the nearest signs of civilization are. 

Eren groans. Behind him, Mikasa asks if he wants to just paint their nails again and watch more Rupaul’s Drag Race. As if he didn't hear her, Eren asks Erna, “Can I school horses with you and Levi tomorrow? I swear I know how to ride.”

Erna, not even turning around, says, “Uh-huh,” very skeptically. “Tomorrow is my day off. I won't even be awake until you're finishing work, so the long answer is: I don't give a fuck, and the short answer is: ask Erwin.”

“Could you ask him for me?”

“Absolutely not. I don't know if you can ride. I'm not gonna vouch for you.” She grabs the USB cord to a printer one of her former co-workers left here forever ago, and plugs it into her laptop.

He groans. It’s more of a whine. It’s long and grating and makes Erna’s chest heave before she reminds him about the gun again. That finally gets him to close the door. 

She hopes that kid finds his fucking chill and doesn't annoy their new rider, who she gets the feeling is annoyed pretty easily, which is why she's watching her details and checking herself twice with this packet of spreadsheets and calendars and lists. 

Erna doesn't always help this much. Usually, if Erwin's just contracted a new rider, one that's an amateur, not well known or proven yet, she won't do shit. Her opinion is that If you're new at this level of this sport, you should be putting together your own show schedules and looking up your own classes.

But when they do get someone whose name she has actually heard before - and she has definitely heard of Levi as he’s risen quickly in the rankings the past few years - she does this busy work. It's expected. It's usually done by the owner of the horses or a farm's barn manager. She is neither of those things. Erwin just gives her all of the responsibilities of a barn manager. Doesn't pay her like one. He would let her use the title, but what's the point if she doesn't get paid more than anyone else? She stubbornly refers to herself, and forces everyone else to refer to her, as a stablehand, because she makes stablehand money.

She likes getting treated like a manager, though. She _is_ the only one who knows what's going on here half the time, so it's appropriate and makes everyone’s lives easier if they just do everything that she says. 

She prints her finished spreadsheet and clicks to a new tab, then dials the number at the bottom of a real estate listing. While she's waiting for an answer, she hears the fucking theme song to Rupaul's Drag Race, upstairs, again, can't they just skip the song and watch the episode oh my god, and, “Hello? I'm calling about your condo. Yeah. Is that a twelve month lease? And utilities are included?” She asks about a dozen more questions of the poor person on the other end, who sounds utterly exhausted like they were about to finish their work day when she called. Erna doesn’t have any sympathy for them. She isn’t done working yet, why should anyone else be?

This is one of her least favorite parts of all the manager duties she takes on: playing concierge to rich equestrians. The ones from other countries are always the worst. They need so much hand holding, or they go the opposite route and they're completely absent, and impossible to get ahold of, doing their own thing until just hours before they’re supposed to be in the ring on show day. 

She doesn't think Levi… Mr. Ackerman? She didn't ask which he prefers… in any case, if he were going to fuck off for weeks at a time, she doesn't think he would have asked to look at the farm. He doesn’t seem to be prone to unnecessary flattery like that. 

She unconsciously rubs at the muscle knots in her shoulder before picking up the calendar next to her right knee. She plucks a green pen from behind her ear and starts writing in the little boxes. 

Smartpak, the biggest provider of supplies to horse owners nationwide, puts out a calendar every year with action shots of some of the equestrians it sponsors. You get a free one with every order. Erna usually keeps three going at the same time. One for writing the work schedule, one for show dates, and one for the farrier and vet schedule. 

Checking back and forth between her long list of almost every horse show up and down the east coast, she writes her usual abbreviations. DEV. PHS. HITS. She turns the page to June and there he is. She forgot that Levi Ackerman is sponsored by Smartpak. She smirks to herself. That means free supplements and blankets and tack for the horses, if she can get him to ask for them. They haven’t had anyone with actual, useful sponsors in years. She looks at the caption at the bottom of the calendar page, his name, the name of the grey horse he’s soaring with over a four foot nine inch triple bar, his face turned to the side instead of looking straight ahead, because in midair he’s already looking at the next fence. She likes that. A lot. She doesn’t see riders do that enough anymore. 

She huffs a whiney noise, is surprised by the unexpected sound of it, and pauses in her writing. She slowly caps her pen, lays it gently on the floor, and straightens her arms against the mattress behind her, carefully lifting herself to stand with as much upper body as possible, not wanting to bring her leg muscles in to help with any fucking movement she has to do after the day she had. 

She locks her door, after having a faint feeling that she’s going to want it to be locked. On her way back to her scattered work on the floor, she grabs another banana from the bowl she keeps on her dresser. If she eats enough of them after a hard day of riding, she can usually sleep through the night without her legs cramping. She bites and chews absently while she sits back down, in the clear spot in the middle of her semicircle of papers and prize lists and calendars - and she picks up the calendar she’d just walked away from, pinching the corner of its page between her thumb and forefinger. 

She looks at the writing at the bottom of the picture again. There’s a small photographer credit. There’s the location it was taken. Something’s missing… she flips a page back, and another, every other rider’s picture comes with a quote. Something schilling Smartpak, because endorsement. Levi’s is the only one with no quote. She goes, “Huh,” to herself, between mouthfuls. 

She stares at his face in the 12x12 calendar photo. Why didn’t she notice that he was hot before. How long has he been a thing? She taps at her laptop’s keyboard. Three years? She tilts her head at an image search and decides that she likes his face… a lot. She likes how severe he looks in the picture. He’s an intense competitor. She can appreciate that.

She opens yet another new tab in her browser and looks for any kind of fucking bio on him. Somehow there’s nothing. He doesn’t do interviews, apparently. There’s no page for the barn he’s attached to in Ireland. He hasn’t joined the national team yet, so even they don’t have a blurb about him. She says, “Huh,” again, this time stronger, more suspicious. “Weird.”

She doesn’t care. She digs weird. She would put up with a lot of weird for that deep voice. 

She’s heard Irish accents before. It isn’t that. They’ve worked with half the most well known riders out of Ireland at some point or another in her few years working for Erwin. And they _didn’t_ sound like that. 

Without turning her eyes from the screen, she throws her banana peel at the wall and it falls into the trash bin. 

She thinks his voice sounds like just a little bit of whiskey feels. Only enough to make her feel warm and good and unreserved about it. The keys clack while her clean, little oval fingernails tap rhythmically over them, not typing anything anymore, just tapping. 

“Ugh.” She hates that she has a thing for the way he sounds. If she’d never met him this would never have become a thing. She opens another tab and starts a playlist of undistracting instrumental music while she tries to get back to work. She has to make sure the usual places nearby are still up for rent. She doesn’t think the condo she just called about is worth looking at, but she never knows. 

She remembers she’s supposed to finish the show calendar. Now she can’t stop thinking about whiskey. “Fuck,” she sighs. She does not want to go up to get her bottle from the fridge. Her sharp nose already can’t take the nail polish smell that is wafting down the stairwell from upstairs. 

Her hand finds a tennis ball that stays next to her mattress, for rolling out muscle knots sometimes, and for throwing against the wall at others. She stands up and goes to the wall, puts the tennis ball between it and her back, and puts pressure against her petrified trapezius muscles, not brave enough to try her quads yet. 

Her shoulders are fucking killing her thanks to Fox. She’s glad he can give a new rider a hard time now. As she presses the ball between her back and the wall, she remembers Levi’s comment about her shoulders and groans. 

Of course he already thinks she’s mannish and hideous. Obviously she’s just a dirty barn brat who hops on horses bareback because she can’t stand to be three minutes late bringing a horse down because she’s a knotted little ball of anxiety. At least she won’t have to see him tomorrow. 

Not that she doesn’t like looking at him…

She sits back down on the floor and rolls the tennis ball gently over her thighs. It feels so good when she doesn’t press too hard. When she doesn’t try to do anything about the muscle knots under her skin. 

She looks down at her show calendar, looks at her spreadsheet, marks down a show date with her left hand while she massages her thigh with her right. The advantage and disadvantage to having unmedicated ADHD is the same thing: multitasking. She is the best at it, but it’s also the only way she can do anything. 

Her eyes go back up to the thin line of his mouth. She wonders if he always makes that same face when he’s jumping. Some riders have little things they can’t help doing when they’re not thinking. 

The tennis ball rolls along her inner thigh, hurting more the higher it goes, making her hiss and bare her teeth. She eases off and rolls back downward to her knee, and up again, and slowly she closes her eyes a little more on every pass, switching legs, eventually pressing down with her elbow when she’s warmed up. 

She crawls into bed. The tennis ball bounces twice against the floor where she drops it, and settles against the side of the mattress. She brings the calendar with her, and she pins it against the wall with her left hand. Her other fingers reach straight down to rub between her legs. She wants to get this over with fast and get back to work before she can't fight off sleep anymore. 

A calendar image doesn't work as well as a porn streaming site. She hasn't tried to get off with just her imagination since… Has she ever done this, she wonders, looking at his stupid face and wishing that he was here, on her makeshift bed, telling her horrible things with his horrible voice. She closes her eyes and tries to picture that crooked half smile above her, and pretend that he's toying with her, his eyes narrowed and his voice even and unaffected, telling her that she's nothing… or that she's everything. Either is good, just nothing in between. She doesn't do in between. 

She imagines his weight pinning her, and let's go of the calendar page, letting it curl over and hide itself, she doesn't need it. Her left hand joins the other and starts teasing the wetness between her lips, trying to draw more out, stubbornly working within the boundaries of the waist of her shorts, because she can't just admit that she's doing this and make it easy by removing clothing. It needs to be rushed, messy, and only halfway wanted.

She whines over how much more difficult this is, how much harder it is to get the pressure to build and she gives a vague thought to the vibrator under her pillow, but actually needing to reach for it might take her out of the moment and she doesn't want to give up the small progress she's made. She's happy with her choice to struggle on with nothing but a memory of his voice and the way he smiled at her stupid joke. 

Her choice is taken away from her by the vibration of her phone on the little shelf next to the bed. Without even thinking she reaches for it, immediately angry at herself for the automatic impulse to prioritize what might be work. She stops herself and almost doesn't open the small grey flip phone. She almost doesn't even look at the display.

But she does and she always will, because sometimes it's a colicking horse, sometimes it's a burst pipe, but there's always potential for it to be an emergency.

The now open screen reveals no emergency, but a text that says, “this hotel is shit -- L.A.”

Fucking nerd signs his texts. As if she wouldn't have put together who it was and what it was about. Does he think she's an idiot? She narrows her eyes at the screen. Probably, yes. 

She has to wipe her hands off on her fucking shorts before she can text him back. She scrunches her nose and resolves to never try to masturbate without porn again. If she hadn’t wanted something so specific she could have been done in less than five minutes. 

“Ughhh,” she kicks her heels against the mattress in a small tantrum that her sore legs do not appreciate. She texts him back, “What do you want me to do about it?” because, genuinely, what? Is she supposed to find a quaint bed and breakfast at ten at night in the middle of fucking nowhere New Jersey? The throbbing she’d been building between her legs starts to fade as her annoyance toward the object of her fastasy grows. 

She thinks she knows one way to make that hotel room a lot better. She can’t help it. She has a one-track mind right now, and before he can begin to text her back, she does something morally dubious and quickly types out, “can you call me? takes forever to text w/ this old phone.”

She has to wait a believable ten seconds before sending the message. She can type fast as hell on this phone. 

Her phone starts vibrating immediately. She isn't ready for it, drops it in surprise, and sits up in bed scrambling to grab it and answer.

Sounding like she just sprinted a mile, she goes, “Hey.”

And his smooth whiskey voice says, “How fucking fast can I get out of this absolute dumpster fire of a hotel?”

She smiles, begins to lean back against her pillows again, and says, “I have some places ready to walk through. I was just looking around for more options when you messaged me.”

“That's fast.”

“I am fast,” she confirms. 

“I saw that.” 

There's a pause, and Erna bites her lip. She hates talking on the phone, why did she do this?

He says, “Turns out I need a house with a couple of guest beds,” in his toneless, deep drone, and she remembers the whole reason she did this. Because she still wants to get off and she's not a good person. 

She says, “Well that would rule out this condo…” with her mouth feeling dry and her vocal chords starting to fry. Her breath is still short like her body is still in masturbation mode while she tries to turn this conversation the way she wants it to go.

“That one of those flats where someone comes round and mows your grass and shit?”

She can't not laugh. “Yeah, it's like that.”

“No, none of that,” he says, sounding a little horrified. “Just as bad as this bitch of a room. Those places are stifling.”

“That bad?”

He doesn't fully answer her, he only grunts, and her hand goes straight between her thighs. This is where, her normal move would be to ask him if he wants her to come over, because she's like that. She isn't shy. 

But now he is technically a coworker, which will make it a very awkward year if she starts it off propositioning him for sex and getting rejected. So she keeps her hand between her legs instead and says, “There’s a 300 acre farm near-ish to us that's always up for rent. It's a tax write-off for this crazy-rich family. They just have a caretaker there and they rent it out to other crazy-rich people.”

“You tryin to say something?”

“I mean…” she drawls with a smile. Her fingers round her clit in fast circles over top of her shorts still. “I just mention it to all of our riders in case they feel like blowing that much money.”

“How much?”

“The deal I could get out of them was twelve point five a month.”

He doesn't comment on the price, which would be astronomical to her. Numbers not even worth thinking about. Twelve point five thousand is more than she makes in a year, sadly. He asks, “Anyone stayed there yet?”

“Nope,” she says, with a pop of her lips. He doesn't respond right away and she's quick to fill the silence. “There's a guest house.”

“A whole separate house?”

“The guest house itself is three bedrooms. The main house has, like, six?” She can't remember exactly, and she has to fight the urge to get up and find where she wrote it down, because she's very busy, she thinks, as her index and middle finger press and slide over her already soaked entrance and she hopes he will just carry the goddamn conversation for a minute… half a minute, even. 

“Seems excessive.”

She sighs a tiny little noise and bites her lip at the way he says ‘excessive.’ “Um,” she hums, to try to cover it, as her index finger pushes deeper, her middle finger stroking her outer lips. 

“Anything smaller, but still with a separate house to keep unwanted guests?”

“No, hah, um, sorry…” her teeth press to her bottom lip and she rolls her hips into her palm. “I’ll keep looking.”

He asks abruptly, “Would you mind showing me some places tomorrow?” 

“Huh?” she moans more than says. “Um, I mean, it’s my day off, but if you need me to…” she trails off as she slides her finger inside her wet walls easily and closes her eyes. 

“The GPS in the car is fucking broken.”

“Uh-huh.” 

“And I can’t look at my phone and drive on the wrong side of the road at the same time.”

“It’s no problem at all,” she squeaks, trying to get him off the phone before his voice makes her come. 

He literally hangs up on her without another word and she doesn’t even care. She’s busy imagining what it could be like if that conversation went differently and he invited her over, grateful to be off the phone and able to moan. She makes her forearm sore. She contorts her hand in different positions, not satisfied with anything, but the orgasm she finally does have is more intense than any she’s had in recent memory and she falls asleep with her laptop still on the floor and a Smartpak calendar in her bed. 

.....................................................................................  


Erwin goes to sleep not feeling overly sure that the day really happened. It’s only confirmed to his mind for sure when Levi Ackerman drives up the driveway the second morning in a row. 

He tilts his head at the blue car, says, “Huh,” to himself. Still a little surprised that he actually means to work there, for him. Levi steps out holding his head, goes to close the door, stops, curses, grabs his helmet from the passenger seat, then slams the car door. 

Erwin says, “Good morning,” almost phrasing it as a question as Levi walks over, then he asks, “Did you want to talk about the show season or?”

“Just fuckin’ riding,” he mutters, walking past him to the barn. 

“Did you… sleep,” he wants to say ‘at all,’ but he goes with, “...well?” 

Levi looks at his watch. Mumbles, “Half nine. Fuck.” Then, lifts his head to answer Erwin with an emotionless, “Not recently.”

They stare at each other for a second. Erwin wonders if Levi is not a morning person. “You… don’t have to come this early…”

Levi ignores him and says, “Horses.”

Erwin tilts his head at his new rider. He wonders if he’s always like this to work with. He would put up with it no matter how obnoxious, because the twenty-four year old kid is a phenomenal rider and might be able to save him from his astronomical state of debt, but…

He holds up a finger to stall him, says, “I gave a work list to Eren, he’ll be able to help you. I’ll be right back.”

After he walks away, Levi finally asks, “Who the fuck is Eren?”

“Um,” a voice peeps up from behind him. He turns around and sees the groom from yesterday waving at him. 

Levi rubs his eyes, holds out his hand, and says, “Work list.”

“Oh, um, sorry,” he fishes a yellow piece of note paper from his pocket, extends his hand,and drops it just as Levi reaches, quickly squeaking out an, “Oops!”

Levi snatches it out of the air, crumpling it at its middle in his fist. With a flick of his wrist he hooks his helmet on his elbow to unfold the wrinkled paper, turns it around to the kid in front of him, points at the first name on the list that he hasn't even given a look yet, and say, “Where?”

Eren squints, mouths the name of the horse to himself, points, and says, “Um, that stall down there, with the red splint boots hanging on the door.”

“Brushes,” he sneers at the overstimulated kid who trips over him-fucking-self to go get a curry comb and a hoof pick, promising that he'll be right back. Levi tosses his helmet and it lands somewhere near the appropriate stall door, close enough. He turns around and goes back to the car for his saddle, blinking, shading his eyes from the sun, groaning at the cursed yellow ball in the sky. 

He wants to die, his brain tells him, very dramatically, as he shakes his head and tries to muster enough energy to get his morning ride over with and… He pauses in his thought and looks around the quiet farm. 

While he's looking, Erwin comes out the side door to the house holding a big, beautiful mug of the blackest tea that Levi's nostrils flare to pick up the scent of from twenty feet away.

Erwin stops in front of him and they trade, saddle for mug. Levi wraps his hands around the heat of the mug as if in a reverent embrace and takes a long drink, closing his eyes and breathing in the steam until his head opens up and stops pounding. “Oh, fuck,” he says to himself in relief as soon as he can stand to come up for air. 

“I didn't know if you take cream or sugar.”

“Fuck no. This is perfect. _Holy_ _shit_.” He leans against the car, trunk still open, finally adjusts his grip on the mug to hold the rim and take slower, less desperate sips.

He looks around again, takes in the quiet, easy scenery of adolescent horses grazing, the groom from before leading a grey thoroughbred out to the paddocks for some fresh air, snorts and whinnies and hooves knocking lightly at stall walls. He takes another deep breath of air that smells like sweet, damp hay, opening his lungs up, letting the caffeine do it's work. He asks, “Where's your girl?”

“Day off,” Erwin says. “She always takes Sundays.”

Levi grunts in response. He forgot already. He can’t remember most of what was said yesterday. He was and still is so sleep deprived. He did, at least, remember some of his conversation with her. The important parts, anyway. He remembered that he told her the GPS in his rental car was broken. This morning he promptly gave the display a quick punch before putting the key in the ignition. He looks at the tiny cut on his second knuckle that caught a sliver of the glass. At least the GPS is _now_ broken.

His new boss seems to shift uncomfortably. Fucking nervous bastard for such a big fucker, Levi thinks, not at all making the connection that it may be attributed to his own moodiness. Erwin says, “You know, you don't have to come to exercise the horses in the morning if--”

“I ride every morning.”

The fair-skinned blond holding his saddle on an arm, says, “That's fine, too. I only ask because, when we've had riders of your caliber, they haven't wanted to do the busy work, and--”

“You're wrong about that,” Levi tells him bluntly upon finishing all that's left of the tea. He turns around and slams the trunk closed. 

“Sorry?”

He takes his saddle, sweeping it up in his hand and onto his forearm, replacing the mug in the larger man’s hand as he does. He starts walking back to the barn to get that first horse ready. 

“There aren't any riders of my caliber.”

Erwin can’t say he isn’t correct, if arrogant. 

He follows him into the barn, midway down the aisle where he’s already leaning his saddle against the wall, checking the name on the dust-covered index card taped to the beam on the right instead of the brass, engraved nameplates that Erwin is sure he’s used to seeing in the barns he rides at. Erna has mentioned it, passive-aggressively again and again, that for the money he wastes on the index cards and painter’s tape she has to keep putting up as they get dirty or wet or ripped off, he could have bought twelve nice nameplates by now.

As he unlocks and slides the door open, clucking to the horse inside, he asks Erwin, “What do they eat?”

Already, he’s asked more questions in twenty-four hours than any rider has asked of Erwin in fifteen years, and he thinks it’s curious, but he answers without commentary that they have a deal with Cavalor feed, so that’s what the show horses get. The rest, he does not tell him, get the cheapest pellet feed he can find until they’re in training and really need the sugar and protein.

While Levi presents an open hand to the almost seventeen hand bay mare in the stall, Erwin looks around. He sighs, not seeing anyone doing anything useful. He’s grown to hate Sundays. 

Erna had said that she would have a show groom trained by the first show, which is now approaching only three weeks from now. He assumes that she means for it to be Eren, but Erwin is fast losing his patience for the day she finds some time to train him in the job. He finds the boy in the washroom, marking turnout on the whiteboard, leaned over the washing machine in front of it. 

Erwin rubs his temples. “Eren.”

The boy startles, and turns around wide-eyed. 

“Please bring Levi a saddle pad.”

“Oh! Sorry!” He goes for the shelves.

Erwin is annoyed that he even has to say, “and a half pad.”

“Right!” he grabs one. 

He shakes his head. Lips tense to a straight line. “And unwrap that leadrope from your neck. It’s a good way to get decapitated.”

The teen pauses, reaches after a moment where he had seemed to forget about the lead rope he had been carrying the way Erna does to keep her hands free while always having a rope close at hand. As he unravels it, he says, “But, Erna always--”

Erwin cuts him off with, “What’s the rule?”

His eyes fly up as he tries hard to think, obviously nervous and eager to please, so Erwin tells him more calmly, softly, “Don’t do what Erna does.”

“Right!” he folds the saddle pad and half pad in his arms and goes to walk out to the aisle. 

Erwin lets him get to the arch of the door before he says, “Don’t go out there without a bridle,” and, after watching the kid run back to the bridle rack to his right, “That one with the french link.”

Then he finds out that the kid doesn’t know what a french link bit is, and he sighs. It’s too common anymore. All about the riding, but not the boring stuff: the equipment, the feed, the things that go on in the background. When he shows him the right one, Eren finally finds the voice to look up at him with hopeful, wide eyes and ask quickly, “Do you think I could start exercising some of the horses? Like Erna?”

Any other day this answer would be an easy yes. Erwin will let anyone ride if they seem confident enough that they can handle themselves. It’s not like he can see whether or not they can ride from looking at them on the ground. 

But Erna isn’t here to watch him and intervene in case anything happens - in case he turns out to be a terrible rider and falls off. It’s not a huge inconvenience, but Erwin is pretty busy and doesn’t want one more thing to try and look after. He frowns before saying, “Ask Mr. Ackerman if he minds having you in the ring.”

Eren takes a sharp inhale of breath and goes, “I couldn’t.”

Just as well, Erwin thinks. “Then ask Erna to take you out tomorrow.”

Eren frowns, but doesn’t stand and wonder about which short, moody equestrian he would rather try to talk to, and turns on his heel to bring Levi his tack and get back to work. Erwin looks at the whiteboard after he’s gone. It isn’t filled with nearly as many black X’s as it would be if Erna were working. His phone vibrates and he takes it from his back pocket. A text from Mike, that he’s sure isn’t the apology he thinks he’s owed. 

“You still in shock?”

As if they didn’t have any kind of argument the day before. 

He sighs long and leans himself against the running washing machine to type: “He showed up half an hour ago & started tacking up a horse without asking someone to do it for him.”

His phone buzzes back, “Bizarre.”

Erwin smiles, glad that Mike is back in his usual, irreverent, teasing mood. “You want to come watch him ride?”

“If u want me to come over that badly you can ask me straight.”

Erwin wonders if that’s supposed to be a bad pun. Then he hears the loud sound of shod hooves hitting cement on their way out the back of the barn, and he goes to follow, wondering where Levi’s going. 

Once in the aisle, he calls after him, “If you wanted to ride the outdoor course again--”

Without stopping, Levi deadpans, “Going to try the arena.”

Erwin frowns. No one ever uses that indoor arena. It’s small, there aren’t many jumps, Erna never drags the footing and will only step in it if she needs to lunge a horse. Hence, his horses are not the best at arena jumping and he decides to be candid with him about that. To which, the man’s response is a sarcastic, “Perfect.” After which he adds, “I’m shit at it as well.”

Erwin very much doubts that while he follows horse and rider out to the small indoor riding ring, catching up with Eren who is starting to do the same, grabbing him by the shoulder, he has to whisper, “Get the next horse ready,” because no one’s taught him his job yet… Because he doesn’t want someone like Levi Ackerman to think he has to get his own horses ready without a groom. It’s humiliating to have him here without any of the amenities a rider like him should have. 

He doesn’t seem put out in the slightest by it, or even to notice, which Erwin thinks is gracious of him. When they walk through the huge doors to the indoor ring, Levi takes a look around, then looks at the horse he’s holding, then to Erwin over his shoulder, to asks, “You think she’ll fit in here?”

It takes Erwin a second to realize that’s a joke. Indeed, the horse he’s about to ride, named Vex is the largest on the farm at seventeen hands and almost thirteen hundred pounds. Levi looks up to her withers, seeming to think about trying to get on from the ground or whether or not that’s even possible, then says, “Fuck it,” to himself and goes for the mounting block off to the side. Once mounted up, he pulls his stirrups and starts to adjust them. When Erwin tilts his head curiously, Levi notices, and says, “I ride long on these big fuckers.”

“That’s interesting.”

“Not much my leg can do up around their fucking backs.”

It’s only hyperbole. He’s short, but not that short at about five foot four inches. It’s still interesting and makes Erwin tilt his head and pay attention. It makes sense to go for a little more reach with your leg on a bigger horse, but most riders find a stirrup length that they like to ride with and stick with it for their entire lives, only going longer or shorter if their riding style changes over a long course of time. 

Levi is still warming up, going through some common bending exercises, when Eren comes out to stand beside Erwin and watch. At the opposite end of the ring, horse and rider practice tight circles and figure-eights within the confines of the small ring with its high walls and higher rafters. Erwin points out to Eren that Levi is trying to get a feel for how well the horse turns. The bigger the horse the harder they turn, like any vehicle. 

Erwin can feel the excitement radiating off of Eren standing next to him in the light of the large doorway. He squeaks when Levi and Vex come trotting over so that he can ask for a small gymnastic line to be set up, to warm up and work on some coordination before trying any large jumps. Erwin needs to elbow Eren lightly to remind him that this would be part of his job, and the kid runs to the corner of the arena for the poles and cavalettis. Erwin calls over to remind him, “Set them twelve feet apart.”

Levi gives him a look and Erwin shrugs up at him. “New hire.”

“Would have guessed working student.”

“We don’t really do any teaching here,” Erwin says. Then he corrects himself, “Well, Erna has some students that come for lessons here and there, but it’s informal. There’s no lesson program.”

“Thank christ,” Levi says, and then, “It’s always this quiet then?”

“Always,” he confirms, glad that Levi likes it that way. It depends on the personality of the rider, but a lot of them like to have more activity bustling around a barn. Personally, Erwin would much rather have boarders and students and trainers busy here all of the time.. 

While Eren figures out how to set up and space jumps frantically, Levi asks Erwin about a dozen questions about how the horses are trained and cared for. Erwin nods along and creases his brow and answers all of them thoughtfully, but after so many, he has to stop him, and ask, “Did you grow up on a horse farm?”

“I grew up with my uncle,” he answers, as if he’s surprised that Erwin didn’t know that. 

“Oh.”

“He didn’t mention that,” he deadpans.

“I only knew him a long time ago.”

“He’s a fucking cunt.” He looks back over to see if Eren is done yet, yells over at him to set up one more, then looks back down at Erwin, saying emotionlessly, “Wants it clear I’m not his son.”

Erwin sighs a long sigh from deep in his chest, and after a beat of wondering whether he wants to open up that much about it, he decides to say, “I can relate.”

They share a silent moment. Levi swallows, nods at the mug in Erwin’s hand from earlier, and says, “I could do with a whole pot of that if you can spare it.”

They each turn, Levi into an opening circle to get his pace before taking Vex over some warm-up jumps, and Erwin to the house. While he’s waiting on water to boil, he gets a text from Erna, “Is he here yet?”

It feels, sometimes, like she knows everything going on even when she’s not physically present, but there is a limit to her vision from the kitchen window of the farmhouse. Erwin takes a screenshot of the received text and sends that to Mike with a message saying, “I blame you.”

Mike texts him back immediately. He must still be at home. “I won’t hear your pessimism. I foresee this working out perfectly.”

He frowns. “It” never works out anywhere near perfectly and this time it could cost him his livelihood. He texts Erna back, “Yes. He’s riding in the indoor arena,” to which he gets no response.

Mike’s next text reads, “I’m coming over.”

Good. He can help him board up the windows for the coming natural disaster that is Erna when she has her mind set on a man.

Erwin takes a hot kettle of tea and a fresh mug out to the arena and Levi pauses his jumping practice with Vex to drink some and wake up. The huge thoroughbred cross bows her head to the bit calmly and presents her nose to Erwin for a pat. Levi reaches down for the mug, clearly secure enough to let go of his reins and drink up there in his saddle, he says, “Your horses are named strangely.”

“How so?”

“Does ‘Vex’ mean something different here? Look at her,” he says, nodding at the way she nuzzles against Erwin’s chest and stands perfectly still. “Is she even a mare?”

Erwin laughs. Mares, the misogynistic saying goes, are just as violently temperamental as women. Vex is not so much. His hand finds the back of his neck while the velvety-coated light bay mare nuzzles him. “You’d have to ask Erna.”

A thin eyebrow arches at him from behind a white mug and he drones, “You let her name them?”

“She’s the one who has to work with them every day. She’s gonna call ‘em what she’s gonna call ‘em.”

“Fair enough.” Levi comments with his voice low and aloof. He hands the mug back down, having already drained it in a few long sips, barely wincing at the heat. Then he motions to Eren who is sitting on the mounting block off to the side watching. “Oi, give us a course.”

Erwin has to stifle a natural laugh that threatens to escape at Eren’s very shocked face. The poor boy looks at Levi, then looks to the jumps in the ring, then stammers horribly while trying to convey a coherent course, and when finally finished, Levi nods. Vex turns her head away from Erwin, sensing that her rider is getting ready for something, then he says, “Did you want to change that pole then?” and he nods to a green and white striped ‘vertical’ with a ground pole to mark the base of the jump on only one side. 

Eren realizes his mistake and runs to move the pole to the opposite side of the jump as Levi calls after him, “Sure you want her to jump it backwards so that she can roll that under her and break her ankles?”

He gives Erwin another look and he smiles up at him. “He’s learning,” to which he receives an eye roll. Levi glares at Eren as the kid comes back. 

When Levi walks to the other end of the arena to start, Eren stands next to Erwin again and says, “I am _so_ embarrassed.”

“It’s okay, you’ll get better. You’re learning.” As Erwin says that, he also texts Erna, “When are you going to have time to talk to Eren?”

“idk. lmk when ackerman is done. showing him houses after.”

Erwin’s stomach drops as he looks up from his phone. Vex picks her head up through a turn, bends as best she can, but Levi’s overshot the turn he needed to make by a mile. He tries like hell to get over the fence he’s aimed at anyway, and Vex tries just as hard for him, crashes through the top two rails, and gets through the jump more than over it. Levi slows her down, cringing, and Erwin calls over, “The horses are good jumpers, but you do still have to set them up.”

“Sorry,” the man groans. He pats Vex on the neck and lets her walk it off with a loose rein. 

“When did you say was the last time you slept?” Erwin is looking down at the phone in his palm. He sighs long at what he feels he has to do right now, and he sends Erna another text that says: “You can come up.”

Levi protests, “Little insomnia, I’m used to it. S’nothing.”

“I think you should let Erna get you into a house where you can sleep.”

This is fully going to come back to bite him in the ass, but right now he can’t have an overly competitive, stubborn, sleep-deprived rider fucking up his best horses. He takes Vex’s reins when they come over and Levi gives him a sheepish look. Erwin holds both reins in his fist, subtly signaling that neither of them are going anywhere, and Levi gives him an aggrieved look before finally dropping his shoulders. He takes his helmet off, then dismounts and takes that mug, full again, back in his fingertips. Eren takes Vex from Erwin and walks her back to the barn.

Erwin tells him, “I can get you seen by a doctor if you need sleeping pills.”

“What I _need_ ,” he says in a low husk, rim of his mug only a centimeter beneath his lips, “is a handle of whisky, a decent meal, and a clean bed.”

“In which case, the first suggestion still stands,” Erwin says firmly, not a new hand at rider tantrums. “Erna will be up here shortly.”

Levi silently hands the mug back for a refill after a few moments, and finally Erwin hears the sound of the screen door down at the farmhouse swinging shut with a loud smack. 

Levi does not notice her, too busy muttering about how he can hack a few fucking horses, and isn't about to be placated and put down for a nap, but then, only after she's already walked up the driveway, moving silently on bare feet, a pair of white strappy sandals hooked through her fingers, his eyes lock on Erna and his mouth shuts. She stops a ways off, between the barn and the indoor arena, at the curve in the driveway, and she waves, then looks in the direction of the barn, turning her hips toward it. 

Her dark hair is down, freshly washed and naturally wavy, the ends of it spiraling to loose corkscrew curls, long bangs pinned back and out of her face. Instead of barn clothes, she's wearing a white summer dress with thin straps to hold it up and a short, gauzy skirt printed with flowers and birds that seems to flow and flutter with her every step. Erwin tilts his head back and pinches the bridge of his nose, his gut instinctively clenching with negative associations he has anytime he sees Erna dolled up like she’s going on a date.

He hears the scraping ring of the ceramic mug hitting the rocky gravel outside the edge of the arena doors. Levi waves it off as if he can't be bothered, and follows her without a word, like she is truly a siren. 

She gives Levi a chance to catch up to her while she puts her sandals on at the back door of the barn, and she offers a cheerful, “Good morning,” when he nears. 

He finally notices then that she's got her arms full as she struggles to buckle her sandals, and he stoops down to take whatever she's holding, which she surrenders without any argument. “Thanks. That's actually for you anyway.”

Levi looks at the binders and folders and calendar, and asks, “What is it?”

She pops up, points at each thing and explains, “Everything. Show schedule, horses, my wish list for your sponsor…”

“Which one?”

“Smartpak.” She tilts her head. “How many are there?”

“A few.” His core involuntarily clenches watching her. The pink tip of her tongue meets her lips and he remembers how breathy and needy she sounded on the phone last night. 

Her white dress almost glows in the dark shadows of the barn. Levi’s fingers crush the strap of his helmet as she looks right and left, narrowing her eyes shrewdly, scanning to make sure everything is as it should be. She asks him, as she scans and walks along the aisle slowly, “Did you ride?”

Rather than speak up, he waits for her to look back for an answer, then he points at Eren putting the mare away. It makes her go, “Oh,” and then, “How was she?”

They stop by Vex’s stall so that Levi can grab his saddle. “She’s good,” he says, omitting the small, inconsequential detail about crashing through a jump because he couldn’t manage a tight turn. He doesn’t blame himself, now having a convenient new object to scapegoat seeing as the woman next to him kept him up all night, worming her way into his head. He hands Erna's stack of papers back to her, goes in the stall, and pushes Eren aside. He pulls his saddle down from Vex's back, cradling it on an arm, and turning back quickly to usher the breathy, needy girl to his car, because he has plans for her. 

As they near the front of the barn, and the sunlight, she says coyly, “You hung up on me last night.”

He watches her closely while he lowers his tone and says, “You sounded busy,” very meaningfully, and feels a small victory when she blushes bright pink, looks away, and chews her soft lips. 

He tries to watch her hips under that skirt while she hurries to walk to the car ahead of him, collecting herself again and squaring her shoulders, keeping her head high. He hates dresses. He has a thing for abs and back dimples and asses, but her ass in particular, and he had a better view of it when she was wearing barn clothes. 

As he opens the drivers side and gets in, she twists around and leans over the center console to place her binder and folders and stacks of lists, which she could have easily held on her lap. He’s convinced that despite his fuck up yesterday, she’s trying to show off her legs and ass. While he’s giving them a very self indulgent appraisal, she gasps, and pops back into her seat like she just remembered something, and asks quickly with wide, anxious eyes, “Actually, do you mind if we switch?”

“Oh thank christ.” He unbuckles his seat belt and can’t get out of the driver's seat fast enough. She leaves the papers on the floor and goes around the front of the car. He tries not to make his leering too obvious when she lifts her leg to get in and sit behind the wheel, apologizing for herself.

“I’m sorry, it’s just…” 

He tells her, “No, you’re perfect,” and caresses up her smooth legs with suddenly drowsy eyes, pausing and tasting every bruise, every authentic nic and scrape earned through hard work with the horses. 

“I’ve driven with Irish riders before. It was... terrifying.”

“Well, everything’s fucking backwards.”

She reaches for the gear shift and asks, “Do you have a preference for fast or scenic?” As he takes a pause to think about which would be best to answer, she raises an eyebrow and asks, “Or both?”

He deadpans, “Both,” just to see what happens, and she steps on the gas without even breaking eye contact with him, careful not to gun it. Smart. Not the kind of girl to kick up gravel on her own driveway. 

She brags, “I can get you almost anywhere without touching a highway,” and when he asks where they’re going first, while reaching for the handle near the roof, she chirps, “That farm with the guest house is closest.” 

“What type of farm?”

She tells him it’s only a few animals. Ten head of cattle, three goats, a bunch of hens - but no rooster to wake you up in the morning, she’s quick to add. It’s a tax write off. Only the bare minimum to be classified as a “farm,” enough for just one person to come take care of once a day if you don’t feel like caring for the animals yourself. 

He can’t wait to see what the appeal is. She says that she gets a deal because she’s friends with the niece of the caretaker. Apparently it’s rented at full price for fifty thousand per week. 

“Is anyone there now?” he asks.

“No,” she answers, taking a turn down yet another windy, green backroad. “Shouldn’t be.”

He doesn’t care what the fucking cost is, he’s going to fuck her on the first bed he sees and then he’s taking a fucking nap. If his sponsors have to pay 150k for a year on a ridiculous boutique farm because it was the first place he saw with a clean bed and bath, then so be it. 

She takes a careful hairpin turn down a small drop and Levi sees another farm, a genuine one, with a herd of sheep grazing and balking at the car, running away in unison. It looks a lot like home, almost indistinguishable but for the preference for wood and wire fences instead of hedge and stone walls. 

“How long have you been riding?” he asks her, not caring that it’s lazy, because it’s easy to get girls like her in bed. He asks them about riding, they chatter for an hour, he acts like he could give a fuck, then he fucks them. He hasn’t gone for a rider in a long time. Sometime around when his riding career took off he developed a preference for smooth, clean, well-mannered women with straight blonde hair and backstabbing forked tongues, he thinks bitterly, specifically of his ex. 

She answers with a shrug of one shoulder as if she doesn’t remember the exact moment she first got on a horse like every horse-crazy barn brat does. “Few years.”

He almost tells her that’s total crap. A few years. Jumping a cross country course bareback on a sporthorse within a few years. He narrows his eyes at her, trying to see what makes her strange - is it visible? “Why’d you name that mare Vex?”

“It was a V year,” she says, distracted, looking around a right turn onto a single lane bridge. Carefully picking her way over it, she says, “It’s alphabetical. Vex is ten years old. I named the foals weaned my first year here A names. Then going backwards each cohort got assigned a letter. Every year after has gone in alphabetical order. That way when anyone asks what age one of our horses is, I always know.”

Levi squints at her. He cannot even begin to understand her. It doesn’t make her less attractive, but it’s slightly disconcerting. 

She shrugs again, “And she’s too fucking big.”

“You can’t handle big?” he asks idly, looking out the window, smirking to himself. 

“Well,” she says, turning into a driveway, “I don’t mind it when they’re mature enough to know what to fucking do with themselves.”

The driveway itself is about a quarter mile of gravel lined by stone walls overgrown with hay and wildflowers, covered by tall shade trees. It’s undeniably tranquil right from the entrance, humble, understated, but beautifully kept. Erna, clearly a little pleased, tells him, “There’s three barns, they grow their own hay and sell what the cows don’t eat, and there’s no neighbors within any noticeable distance.” She slows the car and asks, “Which house did you want to look at first?”

He looks out the windows, notices a small house off to the left and asks, “Which one is that?”

“Guest house.”

“Can it be locked from the outside?”

She blinks and smirks crooked at him. “This for family or friends?”

He takes a second, because he honestly has to decide what Isabel and Farlan would qualify as. “Friends.”

She shrugs as she unbuckles her seatbelt and goes to get out. He waits and his eyes dart to watch her legs glide over the seat, then to catch a glimpse at the hollow between them.

“There’s no way to imprison them, technically,” she tells him, shading her eyes from the sun with her hand and looking off in the distance. “Unless you want to use that corn silo over there creatively...”

After he gets out, she points down the driveway. “There’s a pool and a hot tub down there. I think there are a couple golf carts around here somewhere…”

She takes her binder in her arm and starts off toward the guest house, picking a key from underneath a mat, and walking right in like she’s done it a hundred times. On the inside, what was once a quaint, average farmhouse, is renovated with a brand new kitchen and granite countertops. The open floorplan flows into a living room with a gas fireplace, and a two story ceiling. He whistles at it upon entering. “Not bad.”

“They did this recently,” she says. “Everything’s updated. The main house still has its original floor plan. It’s probably at least a hundred and fifty years old.” 

He sighs. He could live in this house by himself and put Iz and Farlan in the older house, with more room for them to fuck around. He likes this clean, modern aesthetic. 

“Did you want to check out the bedrooms?” she asks, pointing around a corner where there are some stairs.

He starts walking up, but after a few steps he realizes that she hasn’t moved, and he stops, silent for a second, not sure what to say as he’d assumed that was a pretty blatant invitation, as thirsty as she obviously is. “Coming?”

“I’ve seen ‘em,” she chirps, “I’m good.”

He ascends the stairs and rolls his eyes, rubs his brow, and sighs. Now he has to pretend to give a fuck about what is even up here when he’s really not that fucking difficult. He’s fine as long as there’s a bed, a shower, and a toilet. He walks around a little, barely glancing at the three bedrooms before going back down the stairs. she’s perched atop a stool at the kitchen island, skimming over paper with pen. She looks up, smiles, that crooked smile, and slides a sheet in his direction. “Could you sign this?”

He looks at it. She’s marked with a big X where he’s meant to sign. She also has a stack of papers in front of her with similar X’s. “What’s all this?”

“That,” she points, at the one she placed in front of him, “Is a waiver releasing the farm of liability if you get hurt,” she picks up three papers that are paperclipped together and says, “This is for our insurance-” the next two are “-for taxes-” then she puts them all down and asks, “Are you here on work visa or?”

He shakes his head, which makes her look at him curiously. He explains, “Dual citizen.” Then he rolls his shoulders and cracks his neck, then all of his knuckles, picks up the pen, scribbles his signature and the date, then says, “I can do the rest in the car.”

“You don’t like it?” she pouts.

“Keeping my idiot friends in a separate house is appealing,” he tells her in his deep, melodic accent, “But there’s too much here for them to kill themselves or someone else with.”

She seems to think, then nods seriously. “Understood.” As she locks up on the way out, she says, “So something with extra room, but not this much extra room?”

He nods. That would be lovely. Just enough to keep Farlan and Iz occupied, but not, ya know, enable them. He uses the binder to sign the papers on his lap, only looking at them enough to confirm that they’re the usual legal, ass-covering bullshit. 

She taps the steering wheel while he scribbles his signature over and over. She seems to be thinking hard before she finally says, “I'm gonna show you my favorite house.”

“Would have thought this was your favorite the way you talked it up.”

“This is okay, but... I wouldn’t live on a farm if I had a choice.”

“Oh?” he says, signing and dating another form, happy he didn’t choose this place if it’s somewhere she’s less likely to want to come over in the middle of the night when he’s having another streak of insomnia. “This other place near the farm?”

“It is.” she says, pulling out of the driveway. “Close enough, anyway. We’ll stop at a couple other places on the way that are closer.”

Good, because he would live on a farm every day if he could. He’s never seen the point of a house that you just live in. What are you supposed to do all day? He’d trade her room in that farmhouse she lives in for whatever she’s about to show him just for the sake of not needing to drive over to ride in the morning.

“Animals?” he asks. 

“Only the kind that live in the woods.”

He thinks he’ll take it. He likes the idea of being in the middle of nowhere. He’d thought there would be more of that here seeing as there’s so much fucking space in this giant-ass country. What does he know. He hasn’t lived here since he was around seven years old.

The sound of the car, driven carefully over snakey backroads, is the only one not drowned out by the morning sounds of wildlife, crickets, cicaidas, frogs, and all other invisible things behind the thick wall of forest, interrupted by the sound of an engine and tires, then rising again in its wake, permanent. Levi rubs the corners of his eyebrows and rolls up his window. 

“When did you start riding?”

“No one’s ever asked me that,” is his answer.

People always just _know_. He’s been his uncle’s protege for so long. At home there aren’t many people who don’t know everything about his riding career. Abroad there might be a few, but he’d have to look to find them and they wouldn’t know much about show jumping in the first place. Additionally, it’s a pedestrian question. It’s something you ask a kid. Not Ireland’s highest earning show jumping equestrian in recent history. 

She shrugs at him. “Doesn’t seem like anyone’s ever asked you anything.”

He tilts his head at her and looks at her quizzically with a raised fine line of eyebrow. 

“You don’t seem to do interviews. Couldn’t find anything about you,” she says, softly trailing off as she slows to check a blind turn. 

“What were you lookin’ for?” He stabs the i of another hastily scrawled signature. 

“Anything about where you’ve been… who you’ve worked for…” she says, unashamed and matter of fact. 

“My uncle.” He dates the bottom right corner of a tax form. 

“That’s it?”

“Aye,” he riffles the papers in his hand, checking that he didn’t miss a line, “Not the kind of man you walk on easily.”

“And you being here is his idea?”

“Wants me to get experience before joining a national team for any length of time.”

Truthfully, he’d said that he wants his nephew to spend a year in his birth country, see how he feels about it, now that he’s old enough to make his own life, before making any long term decisions, like the decision he was already trying to make to join the Irish National team when he was offered a spot on their roster. Strange, he thinks, to say someone is mature enough to make their own decisions and then force something on them. 

“So you haven’t…” she pauses as if looking for something diplomatic to say, “hopped around barns a lot?” 

“No,” he says, “But you’ve had too many riders per year or none at all.” He looks over at her and her shoulders fall. “So I can see where the anxiety is coming from.”

She turns them onto a small highway, the first road he’s seen with actual lines painted on it, but with a rocky cliff on one side and a river on another and still feeling wholly apart from civilization. After some tense silence, she says, “You can see how it’s weird, though, right?”

He can. So could anyone else he asked last night, thanks to his insomnia and the way the earth turns so that he can talk to almost anyone in the industry at any time of night. On the surface everyone wanted to know why he would attach himself to an outfit that’s barely surviving. That’s what _he_ was looking for. Something he could put forward rather than the truth which is that he was tired, liked the green scenery, and wanted to put his prick in the cute girl. 

“I don’t,” he puts her pen in the cup holder and folds her packet of work papers and waivers into the binder neatly. “You’ve got good horses. That one you named Vex is one of only four out of a stallion that won individual gold at the Olympics.”

She adds proudly, “We have her half sister, too.”

“That’s half of only four in the world, and he was put down last year.”

“We have three horses in training that are only a step away from Ruby Twist,” she tells him, clearly very proud of their connection to the famous jumper. 

He knew that. He knows everything now. He had a lot of hours to kill last night and he was trying to keep his mind occupied so that he wouldn’t wank his cock sore thinking about her. “You have a fair breeding program, a few horses at least that could be decent at a meter sixty, no resident trainer, no students,” he doesn’t say no expectations, but he’s thinking it. He likes the anonymity it might give him. He’s fucking sick of hanging out with the famous members of international teams, trainers he’s heard of his whole life. He takes a deep breath. “I’m fuckin’ simple. I liked that grass field, the horses, and the cute barn manager.”

She blushes, swallows, then mutters, “Technically not a manager.”

“Good,” he says, pulling the lever to lean his seat back so that he can put an arm over his eyes and try to get five minutes of sleep. “Then you can’t tell me what to do.”

Erna - the brown-haired, wire-framed, little minx - lets him sleep until they arrive at the next place, then slams her car door as hard as possible to wake him up. 

He startles awake, sees just her hips and midsection framed in the drivers side window, and blinks. “Fuck.” He turns his head toward dappled sunlight sparkling through the boughs of tall pine trees. 

When he gets out and brings his hands behind his shoulders and stretches up onto his toes, she tells him just after his back cracks, “We’re still only a ten or fifteen minute drive from the farm.”

It’s a large, symmetrical brick house with neat landscaping, set in the middle of forest as far as he can tell. He looks to see her reaction. She looks like she couldn’t care less and leans against the car. An image of himself fucking her up against it flashes through his head. He asks her if she wants to go inside and she shrugs, says, “Nah, I’ve seen this one. It’s very House Hunters,” as if that’s a negative thing. 

He crosses his left arm in front of his chest and pulls until his shoulder pops. He needed that five minute nap. He gets back in the car and lies back in his seat again. He hears her huff outside. “You’re not even going to look?”

He closes his eyes and hopes the next place is further away so he can take a longer cat nap to the white noise of the engine. The next time the door slams he’s deep in REM sleep, in the middle of a dream that would have been enjoyable if not for the resulting half-hard bulge in his breeches that he has to will away. Luckily, this time, she doesn’t stick around the car after stopping. He’s able to take some deep breaths and calm down by the time she’s opening the front door of a big, new, stone house with one of those fuck-off tall foyers with a fucking glitzy chandelier. He’s already cringing the second he walks in. She turns to him and catches the face he pulls, sighs, says, “You hate it,” and walks right back out the door.

She’s observant, he has to give her that. “I’m not fond of cookie cutter mansions.”

“No, it’s fine. Same,” she says. She reaches for the binder on the floor before he gets back in and is flipping through it to find some listings she’d folded up. She whispers “Fuck,” under her breath. After a sigh, she looks up and smiles. “You’re making me actually work.” 

“Hope you don’t mind,” he says, lucky that his deadpan monotone voice doesn’t betray his sarcasm, because if she’s going to play hard to get and make him work to get her in bed, then he won’t apologize for making her life similarly difficult. 

“No,” she waves him off. “It’s just hard to find houses for a twelve month lease. Most people are either trying to sell or rent them for the summer. If nothing else, we can get you a three month lease now and that’ll be good until Saugerties, then I’ll find something new before you get back.” She looks up at the clock display quickly, it’s almost eleven. “Do you mind if we go get something to eat? It would give me a chance to call some people.”

He shakes his head. Whatever he needs to do to get her in a better mood. He doesn’t care if she turns out to eat like a horse. 

She texts with her right hand and steers with her left the whole way down a long and gradually sloping highway and brings them to a tiny parking lot in front of a small cement building next to a gas station, called a cafe, apparently. He’s never seen a cafe that looks this blocky and dull and charmless.

She orders herself a breakfast sandwich and tries to pay, but he tells her that he’s got it. He expects her to protest, but obviously he doesn’t know her that well. She gets herself a coffee too, and flashes him a small smile and a ‘thanks’ over her shoulder as she walks to the corner to dial her phone. 

Levi gets himself a cardboard cup for tea and grabs three bags, tossing them all in and drowning them in boiling hot water from a carafe on a side counter. He sits patiently and watches her pace the empty aisle between the tables and the display case of pastries, talking on her phone, in her quick, sardonic, little take-no-shit tone. The same tone she used with him yesterday before he got her on the phone after midnight when, apparently, she turns into a cute, horny little pumpkin. Maybe, he thinks, if he feeds her she’ll settle on a good fucking house and hold still so that he can get his hands on her.

While he stares at her behind his cup, she makes calls, gets names, calls new people, asks the same questions, and hammers away at the unrewarding, sisyphean task of dealing with people. He’s grateful she’s there to do it. Talking to people is the one part of this job he never got good at. Kenny always did enough talking for both of them in the show ring and Farlan always did enough talking for everyone outside of it. Levi and Isabel both became the quieter, wait-and-see types in contrast, though no less violent under the surface or dangerously curious.

Right now all of his dangerous curiosity is directed purely at what’s under his barn manager’s skirt. She saunters her hips back to him after a few minutes, stands in front of the table and asks, “Do you mind if I eat in the car?”

He shrugs. He couldn’t care less. That car is going back tomorrow in exchange for something less obnoxious. As they go outside, a couple of teenage boys get out of the only other car that’s now in the parking lot and he catches them leering at the legs he was literally just leering at a minute ago, but now he feels possessive and offended about it, turned uncharacteristically jealous by her whole hard-to-get act. She’s seemingly oblivious, staring at her phone, starting to type again after unlocking the car. She tells him, “I’ve got a couple more.”

The first house is fine, if close to the road. It has a bay window and rose bushes. She looks around like she hasn’t seen it before and gravitates toward the kitchen. He follows her, shoulders slightly off, beginning to forget his posture because he’s so fucking tired. He wonders what the secret is to getting her to her knees, because he just wants an orgasm and a twelve hour nap, then another orgasm, followed by another nap and so on to make up for all of the days he hasn’t slept. 

The window next to the table in the breakfast nook is bright with natural sunlight, giving her a backlit glow as she leans her hips against it, crossing her arms like she’s cold. She doesn’t follow him when he goes to the master bedroom. He returns to the kitchen where she’s still leaning on the table and narrows his eyes at her. He knows for a fact that she is attracted to him. What the fuck else does he have to do?

He thinks it’s very interesting that she can’t or won’t make eye contact with him anymore. She’s protective of her personal space when he moves toward her. She leans and side steps before her face turns away to look for something to pretend to be reasonably occupied with, like the view out the window over the kitchen sink, and when he follows, eyes glued to her hips, she steps slowly and carefully back out to the living room, turning in the middle of the floor, and stepping backwards for every single muscle movement of his. So he stops. They stare at each other from across the room. She asks, “What do you think?” as if she does not realize that she is, in a way, running away from him.

Levi looks down and rubs his temples, annoyed that he has to wonder what this girl’s game is and why she keeps teasing him. “It isn’t the worst.”

The side of her mouth tightens, she looks disappointed, like that isn’t good enough, though he thought that ‘not the worst’ was high praise compared to the other places. She crosses her arms. “Do you think you could stay here for a whole year?”

“Could you?”

He hopes that came off as rhetorical and not literal, though he doesn’t know that he didn’t intend to just ask her to move in with him. If she turns out to be less crazy than first impressions suggest, then he thinks she’s got a face and body that he wouldn’t mind seeing on the regular.

She looks around the living room, at the fireplace, the perfectly comfortable looking couch and the flowers on the table, and she goes, “No.”

And he watches her hips sway to the door, and thinks that he hates her dress. If he isn’t going to get laid she could at least have the decency to show off that cute ass in something tighter. He stays awake for the car ride this time, because he’s certain if he falls asleep he’s going to dream about fucking her again, and because, if he doesn’t want that to be only a dream, it seems like he might need to actually talk to her.

He already asked her when she started riding and that is normally the only thing he has to do, so he’s at a loss. He reaches for his phone, gets it out of his pocket, and starts typing a message to Farlan. He wants to type, “Tell me how to get your future wife in bed,” because he’s better at women - if insane - but he decides that might be crass and unfeeling. He opens a message to Isabel instead. He sneaks a picture of Erna for reference, sends it, and types, “cute girl, thinks i’m fit, does not want to fuck me.” One second later he remembers to silence his phone so that it doesn’t vibrate when Isabel sends him, “ur disgusting this is perfect. Is that the new girl farlan has a crush on?”

“You already knew i’m disgusting, tell me how to fuck the cute girl ffs.”

“Did u ask her abour riding?”

Levi covers his face with his palm. 

The next house has a finished basement with the biggest, most overstuffed black leather couch he’s ever seen. He’s about to give up on the girl and fall the fuck asleep on it, because it’s dark and cool and he could sleep there forever. He sits down and sinks into it, stretching his arms over the back and sighing, and of course a moment later he feels her over his shoulder, hears her purr in his ear to ask, “Good?”

He could pull her over the back of the couch. She looks light. 

“Do you like it?” She sounds like she’s pleading when he doesn’t answer right away.

“I think you know that I do,” he husks at her, his voice running deep like cold water. His cock stirs with the charge of sexual tension in the air. He hums, content, waiting for her to join him so that he can finally fuck her and go to sleep, but instead she whispers low and close to his ear, “Do you want to look at just one more?”

He has to take a deep, long breath, because no, he does not, but she sounds like she wants to. She sounds, infuriatingly, like she knows she’s been a tease, but she will definitely let him tear her dress off if he puts up with it for one more house. She sounds like she did last night on the phone. Somehow he gets his tired bones off the most comfortable couch in fucking existence and follows her up the stairs, trying to look up her skirt the whole time. He’s too tired to have any shame. Her panties are flimsy and a pink so light as to match her skin, he notes. Not that it matters. He’s going to rip them the fuck off.

She stops at the top of the stairs and smoothes a hand over her skirt like she’s caught him, and he asks, “How are your legs?”

It catches her off guard successfully, she pauses and bites her lips before muttering, “Sore as fuck.”

He follows her to the car again with his head feeling fuzzy. She tells him it’ll be at least a twenty minute drive, like she’s trying to tell him to take a nap. His heavy eyelids oblige.

His dream is mostly about fucking her into that comfy leather couch, because his brain is running on fumes and using anything it has left on a more interesting fantasy is impossible. He wakes up again after forty minutes, groggy, sitting back up and reaching for his lukewarm tea in the cupholder. 

She gives him a minute to wake up before she asks, “Are you really planning on doing the whole show year with us? Because I could find a six month lease easier.”

He’s offended and tells her sharply, “Wouldn’t say I meant to work if I didn’t.”

She shoots him a look, side eyeing him, scrunching her nose, “I don’t get why.”

“I told you. I’m simple.”

“You could ride anywhere else and it would be easier, and nicer, and more lucrative.”

“Sure, but you’re selling yourselves so well,” he says, because his national language is sarcasm.

She shrugs at him. He doesn’t care if she’s suspicious as long as she stops chattering at him while he’s trying to drink his tea, but after a moment, she nags, “What are you trying to accomplish here?”

“Let a year pass, ride some horses, go the fuck home,” is his very honest answer that he offers her as a courtesy.

She clearly doesn’t like that. He drains the rest of his tea while she scolds him. “You should be at the Nations Cup qualifiers right now.”

“Yeah I’m fucking aware.” For once, they agree. “Tell my uncle.”

“I don’t want my…I don’t want Erwin caught up in a family dispute. If you’re doing this for spite--”

“Relax.”

Oddly enough, she seems to, just because he said it, and she gives him a second to respond. “I’m being a dick about it, but you have nothin’ to worry about. I’m good on my word.”

She gives him a quick look like she’s heard that before. Probably in the same accent. He talked to Margaret O’Brien the night before. She’s on Ireland’s show jumping team now, but did some riding for Erwin about five years ago. A lot of Irish riders have passed through Erwin’s farm, and now that he’s seen it he knows why. It looks like home.

They pull into a driveway that is almost more like a small road unto itself. It crosses a creek where there’s a small bridge. She tells him proudly, “This is my favorite house.”

He wants very badly to squeeze her throat under his fingers and kiss her so that she can’t breathe, but he’s able to restrain himself and drone, “Why didn’t we look at it first, then?”

His glazed eyes slip down to the space between her legs, obscured by her flowy, fluttery little skirt, and stay locked there. He can feel his heart beating in his head. She turns, slowing the car to a stop at the top of where the driveway becomes into a circle around a waterless fountain. 

“I save it for last _because_ it’s my favorite.”

  


Erna’s favorite house is bizarre. Enough so that Levi, when he walks in, doesn’t look confident that he isn’t dreaming. It looks normal on the outside, from the front at least. It’s just a flat wall of stone house, front door and windows all where they should be.

She gives him a few seconds to blink the remaining sleep from his eyes. She pushes her sandals off her feet, and says, “So there isn’t really a ground floor.”

The front door opens to a floor, but it’s only a square landing between staircases. The one going up is normal wooden stairs with a landing. Going down is an iron spiral staircase. There’s a coat rack and a mat to wipe your feet and that’s all. “The house is built into the hill, so down the stairs is most of the living space,” she forewarns him while leading him down. 

The side of the house that’s nestled into the hill is windowless. In contrast, the half that faces the overgrown fields of hay and wild weeds features two-story windows stretching from floor to ceiling. It’s wide open and almost like something out of science fiction if not for the very down-to-earth scenery outside. Erna stands in the middle of the living room and kitchen space that flow into each other while her guest seems to acclimate to the strangeness of it. 

She stays away from the couch, not trusting the way he’s been stalking her with less and less patience, turning inward toward the center of the room gradually as he pretends to look around and hemming her in. She turns to the windows, looks out at the fields, and tries to ignore him.

After a few seconds, she hears a clink and turns her face to the wet bar where he’s treating himself to a small glass of expensive scotch in a multi-faceted crystal decanter. The side of her mouth tenses. She faces him, still wary and keeping him at a distance, she says, “If you like it, this one is free to rent. I’m technically house sitting it right now.”

“So you would get paid for me to stay here,” he husks at her. “What do I get in return?”

She smiles slightly, looks upward, and shrugs as if she doesn’t understand his meaning, when she most certainly hears how sexually charged that question was. She shrugs and tries to sound naive as possible when she says, “Well, free rent.”

His eyes sharpen as he holds his glass by the rim and sips his drink slowly, leaving the decanter uncapped on the bar. “What do you like about it?”

“Mainly this.” She looks out at the meadow that used to be a hay field. This was once a working farm, over fifty years ago. Maybe that's why it feels so homey and spacious and private without feeling overwhelming and too big and too much like work. She whispers, “I'm a slut for some natural light and a view.”

She hears him breathe a fraction of laughter. He's smirking condescendingly at her, so clearly that whisper was louder than she thought. Her face gets hot and she turns away. “There's a basement down there with a laundry room and a gym,” she says, pointing to the archway off in the corner. 

“Isn't this a basement?”

She shrugs. “I don't know. It's almost like a split level,” though it feels very much like a two story house that's just a little _off_. She finds herself moving away from the window with the urge to pace overtaking her. 

Pacing is a nervous habit that usually makes her feel better, but when she tries to go to the opposite side of the living room to look at a bookshelf, it does not _feel_ self soothing. Instead she feels vulnerable, paranoid, and in the side of her eye she catches him moving for her again, closing the distance she’s trying to create, still holding his glass at his side by the rim.

She goes for the stairs and he follows her up the spiral staircase, silent.

She knows that she’s a tease. She is not at all unaware that he probably feels he’s being led on. She was leading him on. She was consciously and purposely leading him on for at least an hour. She has a thing for teasing men. It makes the eventual sex better by her estimation. 

She winces to herself at this situation she’s created. She’d assumed he was fucking around for a month or two, riding with their farm because it’s a convenient location to all of the east coast shows that happen early in the summer. She’d told herself that he would ditch them for another barn by August. That's what usually happens. But he seems sincere about sticking around for the whole year. He’s said that he rides every day. 

Erna bites her lip thinking about what a bad idea it would be to fuck someone, especially a famous equestrian someone, who she’s going to have to work with every day. She knows herself. She knows she can’t make that work - not from now all the way through December. 

He’s fucking arrogant. She might like that right now, but to deal with that ego every day? There’s nothing she hates more than riders with huge egos. That’s her whole thing. But he’s so hot. He has an accent and a deep voice and he’s mean to her and she loves that. That’s also her whole thing. Her mind moves a mile a second weighing every pro and con as she hits the top of the steps. His shadow licks at her bare heels. His gaze is tangible, not something she has to assume or expect or would dare to roll her eyes at, but heavy and invasive and driving her like a whip crack towards making bad decisions. She twirls on her toes and makes way in the skinny hallway landing by leaning on the railing, and pointing at the guest room, “There’s only the one extra bedroom, but it’s got two twin beds.”

He ignores that piece of information and goes the opposite direction past the bathroom and the office, to the master bedroom at the end of the hallway. As she follows about ten feet behind, she says, unable to hide her enthusiasm for the house, “You _have_ to check out the master bath.”

She doesn’t cross the doorframe while he stands in the middle of the bedroom, head turning, looking at the antique furniture and the king size four poster bed. His voice is miles deep. “What’s so special about it?” 

He starts to turn toward the closed door to the master bath. Erna follows, still maintaining a good distance from him. “You just have to see it,” she says calmly. 

Moments later, he’s deadpanning from the other room, “What the everloving fuck?”

Her phone buzzes in her hand and she flips it open to read the message she just got from Annie, Nile Dok’s barn manager. It reads: “i’m annoyed. drinks @bar later.”

Just as Erna goes to respond she gets a second one. She sighs and leans against the side of the bed to read it: “i heard that levi ackerman is riding for erwin. nile has been aggro all day.”

Erna smiles and settles onto the comfy white duvet, typing back, “Good to both,” not at all surprised about the speed of gossip, and always enjoying anything that pisses off that rat-faced bastard. 

When she looks up at the sound of a clearing throat, she sees past Levi at first. He’s closer than expected. She looked automatically to the bathroom, and focused first on his empty glass sitting on the sink. Closer to her, she sees the sleepy nonchalance, the swagger of superiority, and then he’s right in front of her so close that if she wants to stand up from the bed she’ll have to press herself against his body.

Unconsciously her eyelids sag so her eyelashes cover half her gaze and make her appear more submissive, and she hates it, but she’s young and impulsive and shallow. His pictures didn’t do him justice, she thinks, those fucking riding blazers hide how muscular his arms are. In a polo she can see every line of muscle and vein. While he’s trying to catch her eyes, he instead catches her looking and his lips slowly curl into a small, wolfish smile. 

Thank fuck her phone vibrates again. She glues her eyes to it, begs, “I have to take this,” slides to her right, and walks away from the bed with him trailing her. She starts to type a message to Eren, who’d just texted to ask when the first show is going to be, something she could definitely ignore right now, but she walks over to face the window while she types, “couldn’t tell you. Erwin might have an idea. Do you have his number?”

Levi’s hands encircle her waist lightly, rather than uncreatively trying to grope her tits or her ass first. She would be mildly impressed, but she’s too focused on the kiss he’s pressing softly to her shoulder. 

“What do I get for taking your bait and following you all over creation?” he asks, his voice deep and cold, pulling her into his chest, pushing his hips into her so that she can feel the bulge of his cock pressing hard against her ass. She spins around in his hands and grey eyes bore into hers. 

“I'm sorry,” she squeaks, “I know this seems - I mean - I don't want to do this.” She bites her lip hard and her eyebrows knit as she waits for his reaction.

To his credit, he lets go of her immediately, then he lowers his eyelids and deadpans a monotone but clear, “What?”

“I know it seems like I was…” she waves her fingers for a better expression, but finds nothing better than, “like, leading you on, but I just think it's a bad idea. We’re gonna have to work together, a lot, and--”

He grunts, “Uh-huh,” at her, and turns toward the bed.

She watches him, and, slowing down, says, “I'm so sorry, um, I hope this isn't--”

He falls face first on the bed, crossing his arms underneath his head. 

She rounds the bed to stand over him. “A-are you staying here?”

He moans a noise that she thinks means yes. She waits a second, then reminds him, “Um, I drove your car here.”

He groans, “Fuuuck.”

“Yeah,” she crosses her arms and looks around awkwardly.

“Take the fucking car,” he says, though it's muffled into the duvet and she has to ask him to repeat it, to which he adds, “they’ll pick it up in the morning.”

She backs out of the room, smoothing her skirt down over her hips with her palms, shrugging as she says, “Thanks, sorry,” with a pleased, little sheepish grin. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm sorry i missed a week on my update schedule. i had a big sad. i'll update again in seven days and then i'll be back on track.


	7. chapter seven/eight/nine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> glossary:
> 
> "indoor arena" - a riding ring with walls and a roof around it, because, ya know, weather happens. referred to as an "indoor" or an "arena" fucking interchangeably and I'm so sorry I will never, ever be consistent about this
> 
> "bit" - the metal thing that goes in the horse's mouth (there are thousands of different shapes and types of bits)

The bedroom is deadly quiet, so that Levi can hear Erna’s careful little steps perfectly as they fade down the stairs and out the door. He can hear the crunch of the gravel, car door closing, engine starting, and soon only silence. He breathes deep with his face partially buried in the clean, white sheets, grateful to be alone and able to sleep even if he didn’t achieve the best case scenario of getting his dick sucked. He only got infuriatingly close to achieving that vividly imagined scenario. Close enough to have a nagging, painful case of blue balls like he hasn’t experienced since he was a teenager.

Despite all that, he’s out cold in less than five minutes, and then woken up again in ten by Farlan, skyping him from across the fucking ocean. He groans to himself, “Whyyyy?” as he swipes at his screen and answers the video call.

“The fuck are you doin?”

“Sleeping. Talking to you in my sleep,” he answers, his eyes barely open.

He sees Isabel peek over Farlan’s shoulder, and she says, point of fact, “I told him.”

Levi sighs in disgust and lifts his head a little. “You’re a terrible friend.”

Farlan breaks in with, “You are!”

“Why’d you tell him?!”

Isabel shrugs. “For fun.”

Levi groans, takes the phone in his hand and turns it around, panning it around the empty room slowly and saying, “She’s not even here, see?”

And he hears “Do not try  _ fuck _ my  _ future wife  _ you filthy prick!” blaring from the phone. While Isabel cackles her high, ringing, evil laugh. 

He turns the phone to face him again and says, “Farlan, I’m trying to sleep. I couldn’t fuck her if she reappeared and offered to ride me to completion, that’s how tired I fucking am.” 

“She’s a pure and radiant sunflower and if you put your fuckin’ hands on her I’m goin’ to kick your arse.”

“You’re not even being reasonable,” he groans calmly.

Isabel chimes in, “You know how he gets, Levi.”

“He hasn’t even met her!”

“It’s love at first sight,” Farlan proclaims.

Isabel sighs, “He’s just bored. Let him have his fun.”

Farlan turns to her dramatically, mouth agape. “How  _ dare  _ you. I am in  _ love _ .”

Levi pinches the bridge of his nose. “You. Have. Not. Even. Met. Her.”

“We. Are. Soul. Mates.” he barks back.

“Fucking christ…”

Isabel says, “Just let him do his thing where he acts like a cartoon, she’ll reject him presuming she isn’t mentally ill, and we’ll all go on with our lives.”

“No,” Levi groans, “This is future wife number… what? seven? Besides you cannot claim a girl from across the fucking world.”

“I can, I did, and if you so much as look at her you’re fucking dead, mate.”

“This is ridiculous. I was only going to fuck her  _ once _ , you didn’t even need to know.” He looks at Isabel and says, “You’re a cunt.”

“My sweet and innocent moonbeam would never have a one night stand with you, you son of a bitch.”   
  


“You just called her a sunbeam a minute ago, you can’t claim all of the celestial bodies in the fucking sky, you can pick  _ one _ .”

Isabel grins. “This is perfect.”

“I didn’t even care that much about fucking her or not, but now I am definitely going to, not even because I want to, but because  _ you _ are being a  _ fucking idiot _ .”

Farlan hangs up. That’s all Levi knows. He goes back to sleep and hits REM in seconds. On the other side of the ocean, Farlan stands and goes for his keys as Isabel tries to tackle him, throwing her arms around his neck and trying to weigh him down while he staggers for the door, shouting in his ear, “You can kill ‘im next week, I’m not payin to change the tickets!”

  
  
  


………………………………………………………………….

  
  
  


Erna smiles to herself as she cruises down a smooth, wide backroad. Worth the detour, she took to get there, she decides, as she accelerates over a small hill and feels her stomach flip and settle. She blows her bangs out of her eyes as the wind whips them around into a curl. She braces her knee against the wheel, slips an elastic off her wrist and finger combs her unruly hair into a ponytail. Her teeth pull at her lower lip as a turn comes up. She employs her elbow on the top of the wheel as she pulls her hair through the elastic, and fishtails out of the turn. Her heart stops beating, then pounds as hard and fast as a jackhammer as her hands dart for the wheel and clutch tight, turning into the skid and accelerating through it. She gets the car straightened out without going off the road, takes a deep breath, and is shocked into focusing on her driving for a whole fifteen seconds before she lets herself be distracted again. The urge to multitask makes her reach for her phone so that she can text Annie back.

She finally pulls into the driveway and parks next to Eren’s car after driving every winding, rising, falling, wide-shouldered, or narrow cliff-bordered road she knows, just for the fun of it. She gets to drive so rarely, and it’s one of her favorite things to do, second only to riding horses. Even though her legs are still aching from her workout yesterday, she’s too excited to walk inside, jogging instead. Additionally, too eager to change and shower for the second time today, to wash the existential ick of what she’s done off of her. 

Her roommates are lounging in the living room, playing a video game. They grunt quick greetings, she disappears into the bathroom with an armful of clothes and toiletries, then, fifteen minutes later, fresh from the shower, pulling her hair into a ponytail, Erna makes a rare appearance in the common area and asks, “Hey, have y’all been friends a long time?”

Eren is the one who answers, “Yeess?” suspiciously while the others nod, because she isn’t usually this sociable and that’s a weird question to ask when you are not sociable.

“So you’re probably used to cramming together in the back seats of small cars?”   
  


Mikasa snorts a laugh and covers her mouth quickly before returning her hand to the playstation controller. Eren answers, “I mean, yeah?”

“Good, because Annie gets shotgun.”

Mikasa takes the front seat until they get to Utopian Acres, Nile’s farm, where Erna parks the blue sports car directly in front of the barn. It’s not as conspicuous as she would like, because it’s late in the afternoon and activity around the farm is pretty low, but still. She steps out of the car and saunters inside the bright, stained wood and black bar stable, looking as new and clean as it always does. She looks around, hoping to see Erwin’s frenemy as she walks toward the office. Venetian blinds hide the inside, which turns out to be empty upon her inspection. Her shoulders fall with disappointment and she goes to the next door, behind the desk, that opens to a staircase up to Annie’s apartment where they almost crash into each other. 

Erna simply shouts, “Fuck,” as is her style, while Annie pockets her keys in her dark indigo jeans, moves her friend to the side, and says, “You wouldn’t believe my day.”

“Same.” 

“A fucking farrier. No, an apprentice -” Annie complains, “- not even a real farrier - tried to tell me how to do  _ my  _ job…”

Erna lets her vent on the familiar theme, muttering sympathetically, curling her lip in disgust with an “Ew.”

They’re both relatively young, physically petite women in an unenlightened field. They take a lot of shit. Annie has a particular hatred for all forms of mansplaining, of which she is often a victim, because she knows more than anyone. She knows more than Erna. Literally every time a man is trying to tell her about horses, it is mansplaining, because no man knows more about horses than Annie. It’s an infuriating position to be in. It makes her hate to try to talk to anyone about all things equine. Erna feels the same way. They bonded over the shared trait of hating to talk about horses. If they ever find themselves needing to talk about work with each other, their speech is heavily laden with cynicism and contempt… like it is now.

Erna, as if her news isn’t half as interesting, says simply, “Ackerman hit on me.”

Annie stops in the middle of the open barn doors, turns and looks at Erna with interested eyes and slowly curling lips. Erna says, “I mean, ‘hit on me’ is a polite way to put it.”

Annie tilts her head. “You  _ hate _ riders.” Not surprised that a professional equestrian did something sleazy, but more that Erna seems not to be even a little angry about it.

“He’s… um… he’s got a voice.” Erna wrings her hands while Annie judges her. Then she erupts, “I didn’t do anything, okay? I really, really, wanted to so fucking bad, and I don’t know why. He’s just hot, okay? He’s so hot and it’s the worst. I hate him so much. He’s a spoiled, arrogant, wealthy piece of shit, but he’s…”

“Hot?” Annie deadpans sarcastically mocking Erna’s limited vocabulary on the topic.

“Shut the fuck up,” her friend pouts.

“I don’t know what your thing for short guys is,” Annie drones with vague disgust. “Isn’t he like five - four?”

“You know I don’t trust tall people!” Erna squeals as they walk to the car.

“I bet you did that thing that you do.” Annie gets into the front seat, noticing the trio in the back she nods and introduces herself while Erna rounds the side. 

“What thing?” she asks when she gets behind the wheel.

Annie glances in the rearview mirror like she doesn’t want to say in front of mixed company. “You know.”

Erna rolls her eyes and purses her lips. She grunts, “Okay.”

To change the subject, Annie asks, “Do you want me to call Reed?”

“So that you can tell him? So that he can tell everyone?”

“No,” Annie drawls, in her deep, aloof voice, “So that he can go dancing with us, slut.”

“Dancing?” peeps from the backseat. 

“You wanna go to New Hope?” Erna asks, ignoring the question from behind her. 

“Of course,” Annie answers, moving to turn on the radio and balking at the broken touchscreen. “Where’d you get the car?”

“It’s…  _ his _ …” she cringes.

“Did you steal Levi Ackerman’s car?” Annie deadpans as if that’s a logical and necessary assumption.

“Yeah, same question,” Armin pipes in from the backseat. 

Erna finally looks in the rearview mirror herself, after turning onto the highway that will take them over the bridge to Pennsylvania. “Did you three get in this car thinking that I stole it?”

“I mean…” Eren trails off.

“Is it a gift?” Annie teases. 

“No,” she rushes to say. “It’s just... It was awkward.”

“Why’s he  _ here _ anyway?” Annie sneers, because everything outside of her own purview is worth only her derision. 

“I still don’t fucking know.”

“I think he’s going to join the USET,” Eren says from the back, referring to the national equestrian team by its acronym. 

Annie makes a disgusted face. “Why? They’re terrible.”

Erna shouts over her, “Tom McLain is wonderful and I love him.”

“Yeah,” Annie sneers, “I know. He’s your celebrity boyfriend.”

Erna smiles to herself, and sighs, “He’s so daddy,” while allowing herself to get lost in a quick daydream about the only polite, handsome, talented man currently on the USET’s roster. She’s admired him since she was young, and has never had the chance to meet him, but has only heard good things, which is rare in this business. 

Annie rolls her eyes. “He’s getting slow,” making her friend gasp and respond with, “How dare?”

Eren chimes in, “Jessica Springsteen is amazing.”

Annie scoffs and laughs. She turns around and asks, “Are we watching the same person?”

Erna tries to soothe her friend. Something about her picking on Eren rubs her the wrong way. “Annie…”

“Jessica Springsteen can’t balance a turn.” She faces forward, curls in her seat, and kicks her feet up on the dashboard. 

“But she won the individual gold at the Pan Am games,” Eren nearly shrieks. 

“On a horse that already won the fucking Olympics the year before her daddy bought it for her.” Annie rolls her eyes. “Please…”

Eren finally shuts up, but just to put the nail in the coffin, the shrewd little blonde says, “Erna beat her, you know?”

The car nearly swerves off the road so that Erna can backhand Annie in the shoulder with her bony knuckles while she laughs and holds her hands up, “What? What did I do?”

Eren looks at Erna’s reflection in the rearview mirror and says, “You said that you don’t do horse shows.”

“It was a long time ago,” Erna growls through her teeth at her friend who’s sulking and getting out her phone.

“When did you beat Jessica Springsteen?! Where? Oh my god!”

Erna glares in the rearview mirror and shouts a threat at him. “I will crash this car and kill us all, Eren!”

Annie puts a finger in her ear as she talks into her phone. “Yeah, hey gurl. No, that’s Erna threatening to kill us all. We’re going to New Hope.”

When they get to their destination, un-murdered, Erna holds her hand out for everyone’s spare change to contribute to the valet parking. While the keys are still falling to the valet’s open palm, her friend, Reed grabs her from behind and scoops Erna up, sweeping her off her feet, and spinning her around like she weighs as much as a small child. When he lets her go, she sways while the fluid around her brain spins, and she deadpans at him, “You know I don’t like that.”

He’s got at least one and a half feet of height on her, so, looking down, he says, “Don’t care. I’m so happy you came out.”

“I… go places… sometimes,” she says, unconvincingly, leading him toward the steps. She doesn’t want to lose Annie and the others. When she goes out by herself, she’s a mess. She makes horrible, reckless decisions and takes unnecessary risks. By now, she knows this about herself, and simply avoids going out by herself, only meeting up with her friends if she is in a position of responsibility, such as this one, where she’s appointed herself designated driver and babysitter to three roommates and a surly best friend. 

As the valet rolls away, Reed asks Erna, “What is this car?”

Annie shouts down from the balcony around the outdoor bar, “It’s Levi Ackerman’s.”

Erna mutters, “Fucking bitch.”

Reed tilts his head, takes Erna’s hand, pulls her up the steps faster, and asks, “What? When did you meet him? I thought he lived in Ireland. Did he give you a car? Is he your sugar daddy now, you slut?”

“Oh my god, no,” she squeals, “Please don’t tell anyone that!”

“I’m so happy for you,” he goes on, to annoy her, “You deserve a sugar daddy.” He thinks it’s cute when she’s annoyed. Most people do. This annoys her further. It is a vicious cycle. At the top of the steps, Reed notices the trio sitting with Annie, and asks, “New roommates?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Cute.”

“Which one?” 

He gives her a look. “...Please.”

“What?”

“You know my type.”

She drops her shoulders, lets the dismay in his character show over her face, and as judgey as possible, says, “I can’t watch this. Just don’t hurt him.”

He does not acknowledge what she’s saying. He goes toward the bar on the balcony. Erna hisses, “He’s like eighteen,” though she’s actually pretty sure that Eren is nineteen.

Reed turns back and shrugs at her like there is nothing wrong with that, like she’s being weird. Technically, legally, he’s right. Reed is only two years older than her at twenty-four, but even to her that seems like too much of an age gap. Eren seems like a baby in comparison. So she says, “You’re so gross.”

He shrugs at her and says, “He’s cute.”

She reiterates, “Gross,” childishly and emphatically on her way inside, skipping the bar, because she can’t drink. Not that she’s ever had a single reservation about getting drunk and driving home, but not tonight, not in that car. 

She didn’t come for alcohol anyway, only validation - in the dark - with bass throbbing through her body, and strange hands on her hips. She doesn’t bother turning around to see who they belong to for a good, long time. When she finally does, the guy behind her is obscured by the darkness anyway, and she likes it that way. Dark eyes, smoldering down at her, lust unembodied. She lets herself sag against him and forces him to hold her up, mainly to see how strong he is, but partially to make herself seem drunk and easily taken advantage of. He cradles her easily and passes her little test. He husks his name at her, and she immediately pushes it from her mind. It doesn’t fit him, and she hates it, and she hates him anyway for nothing more specific than being a man. She hates the idea of men in general, on principle, and hates everything about all of them, except for the way some of them look.

After she drags him away, she makes him stand behind her and kiss her shoulder and reach down the front of her shorts to clumsily rub her clit. He doesn’t say anything, only breathes, and makes it easy for her to pretend. 

Annie finds her in the coat check room, because that’s where she always goes. She learned about it from one of the bartenders here. It’s a lot better than a bathroom stall for privacy… usually.

Annie lowers her eyelids at her friend in her compromising position, tall dark man behind her, hand shoved down her shorts, and she goes, “This is what I was talking about, you know?”

“Fuck off,” Erna whines.

“You always do this.”

Erna elbows the man behind her, rolls her shoulder away from his lips, and shudders. She zips up her shorts and mutters, “Thanks,” cutting their encounter short because she knows Annie will be relentless. As she leaves the dark room and follows into the strobing lights, she asks, “Do what?”

“Were you going to fuck him?”

“Gross. No.”

Leading her through throngs of people, toward a booth, she then asks, “Were you going to tease him and leave him with a case of blue balls to see what would happen?”

“I do not  _ always _ do that. I reciprocate like half the time... probably... on average.” She thinks lately it’s more like less than a third of the time, but who’s counting besides Annie.

“I bet you were leading Ackerman on. You’re an attention whore.”

“No,” Erna protests before they near the table, “I did actually want to fuck him. I didn’t ‘lead him on’.” She puts disgusted air quotes around the very concept. “I exercised my right to change my mind, and as soon as I did, I stopped flirting with him.”

As Annie swirls to sit down and slide into the semicircular seat, she rolls her eyes and echoes, “Flirting...” and wiggles over to Armin. Still staring at her friend and judging her, she tells Erna, “You don’t flirt. I don’t know what you do. I wouldn’t know what to call it.”

Erna frowns. She’s too depressed to respond to that. She scans the surrounding area and asks, “Where are Eren and Mikasa?” She looks for a beat and then asks, “Where’s Reed?”

Armin points to Mikasa dancing. The other two are missing. Erna tilts her head back to look upward in hopeless surrender to the shitty situation, as she’s sure Reed has probably already seduced Eren away and her shoulders sag in a petulant, put upon expression. Annie asks if she wants a drink. She shakes her head, but Annie nudges Armin to go get them drinks anyway. 

Erna gets in the booth as Armin leaves, leaning her elbows on the table. She wills Annie not to say it, but she does, in her deep, lazy drawl. “He’s hot.”

“You and Reed are the worst. Please do not fuck my roommates.”

“I can’t say shit for Reed,” she deadpans. Then, in a softer tone, she says, “I like him like a person. He’s gonna take me on a date tomorrow.”

Erna sags. “I guess that’s cute.” She gets elbowed in the ribs. “Ow.” Rubs her side. “I’m happy for you. God.”

She wishes she could like someone good. 

Armin comes back and listens to Annie sympathetically while she shouts about her day, about all of the people who talk down to her because they don’t know better. Erna wants to cut in and mention it’s actually because she is literally beneath everyone because of how short she is, but she stares off to the side and watches people dancing while she sips at a soda and lets them talk like the good third wheel that she is. 

Eventually, she remembers, that despite the weird day she had, she does have to work in the morning, just like normal. She starts trying to round everyone up to take them home, tapping Mikasa on the shoulder in the middle of the dance floor and signing a walking motion with her fingers rather than trying to shout at her. Mikasa follows her away to where it’s quiet enough to be heard and tells Erna that she saw Eren and Reed go toward the back of the club when her coworker asks if she’s seen them. 

Erna knows Reed better than that. She heads for the fire exit instead.

Reed’s back is to the brick wall of the club in the alley behind it. To Erna, it looks like he’s letting Eren eat his face. She walks into the alley for a better view, the open door letting the noise of the club follow her. 

She tilts her head. They’re both fairly attractive. Reed, especially, for being just a little more mature, a little less baby-faced, with his sharp jawline and chin and his slicked back light brown hair, bleach fading at the ends from when he dyed it fuschia two months ago. His hands slide down Eren’s back and cup his ass. Erna can hear him moan and she sneers, her lip curling in disgust and envy. 

Mikasa comes out just as the flash of Erna’s phone is going off. She looks to Erna first, then to what she’s pointing her phone at. She walks over with a disapproving look for Erna. Not wanting the other woman on her bad side, Erna shrugs and says, “I mean, I’m happy for them?”

Mikasa comes to stand next to her and sighs, like she expected this much. After a moment, Erna tilts her phone screen her way and asks, “You want me to send this to you?”

Mikasa looks at the picture of Reed and Eren for a moment, then shrugs, takes her phone out of her pocket and says, “Yeah, let me get that.”

  
  


…………………………………………………………………………………….

  
  


Outside Levi’s temporary house in the middle of nowhere, the landscape is deceptively loud with the sound of overgrown orchard grass swaying with every slight breeze, crickets with their constant fiddling, all kinds of songbirds getting out their last performances before twilight. The white noise of it keeps Levi in a deep, utterly unbroken sleep until dawn. He sleeps like the dead and wakes up with a dry mouth, even though he only had that one glass of scotch. He rolls out of bed in the darkness, before dawn, groaning and stretching. Without thinking, he goes to the bathroom, hits the light switch, and startles himself because he fucking forgot...

The master bathroom is covered wall to wall in mirrors. It would otherwise be a fine bathroom, with a big, jetted, jacuzzi tub, a separate shower, heated towel rack and heated tile floors, all ruined by mirrored walls on all sides and on the ceiling. He looks up. The fucking ceiling. Why would you want mirrors on the ceiling? He can see himself piss from every angle. 

On his way downstairs for a glass of water, he sees that Erna was kind enough to leave his saddle and his bags inside the front door before taking off with his fucking car. If only she would have left him with his pride as well, he thinks, cringing as he picks up a bag and makes a detour to brush his teeth and change. 

He goes back up the stairs. The only two bathrooms in the house are on the second floor. Brilliant design, he thinks sarcastically. He hesitates to open the door to the other bathroom in the upstairs hallway between the guest room and the office. He takes a deep breath, holds it, opens the door, and finds a completely normal white tiled bathroom. “Thank fuck,” he sighs before muttering to himself, “Fucking Willy Wonka house…” even though he can’t deny there’s something begrudgingly charming about the place, like an ugly dog. It gave him the best night of sleep he’s had in his life, so he’s not going to complain too much about its many quirks. 

He cleans himself up, strips the bed, puts his shit away, and calls for a new fucking car. Something less ridiculous than what he was stuck with last time. He goes downstairs to see if there’s food and he finds a stocked pantry with dry cereals in jars and, unexpectedly, but gloriously, about a hundred different types of tea. 

The fridge is as clean as a store model, but there’s apples, yogurt, milk, a pullout drawer with different cheeses and grapes and berries, and he has to say out loud, “What the fuck is this place?”

The cabinet next to the fridge reveals one row of mismatched, but clean mugs, and more tea, this time in loose leaf form, in mason jars. The cabinet next to that is full from top to bottom with tea. The next is stocked with small packets of sugar - all three shelves. He pauses, brings his hand to his face, his index finger falling over his nose and the rest of his fingers fanning over his mouth and chin. 

His heart is racing a little. 

He checks the rest of the cabinets and finds more practical things like nonperishable food and dishes, but then the last cabinet, at the end of the row, is filled with different types of more exotic teas in boxes and bags and jars and tins. Overwhelmed, he grabs a little bag of pungent black tea from a box and looks for a kettle, panicking for a moment that it would be exactly his fucking luck if he couldn’t find one pot or kettle or pan or any conveyance with which to boil water.

He can’t remember what that fear is called, where you can’t enjoy anything because you’re sure that there will be penance for any good thing that happens to you. He thinks it’s purely a Catholic thing, but he knows there's a fancy, intellectual psychology word for it too. 

After a panicked moment, he sees a little silver kettle on the stove directly in front of him. The burner clicks to life with a gas flame, yet another thing he appreciates. He’s never been a fan of electric stoves or kettles. 

The sun flashes and begins to flood the room as it rises over the treeline at the other end of the long field of overgrown hay and grass behind the house. Everything is bathed in bright orangey pink light and Levi stands in awe, leaning himself against the butcher block counter behind him. He gets to drink his tea and eat his breakfast while watching the sun rise slowly over the field after that initial burst of light. Afterward he feels more well rested than he can ever remember, feeling at home without all the stress of being in his actual home with his demanding uncle and his eccentric friends. 

He wonders if that crazy girl did this. His initial attitude was that Farlan could fucking have her, he was lying about wanting to fuck her. He’s over it already. He would never put in the emotional effort. She’s worried about her horses and her farm and the loyalty is cute, but he’d have to win her over and he can’t be bothered… unless she stocked his kitchen with a full year’s supply of tea on intuition, then he’ll go buy an engagement ring right now.

He plans to ask her what the fuck the shit-ton of tea in the kitchen is about when he gets to the farm, except that there’s a red Mustang convertible pulling up the driveway from the opposite end just as he arrives, and as he’s getting his saddle, Erna comes out of the barn screaming, “You said you would get him here on time!”

And it doesn’t seem like a good time to try to ask her. Although he does stop to watch the scene unfold as Eren jumps out of the car and runs into the barn. Some absolutely smarmy douchebag-looking motherfucker in a pink polo shirt and a pair of aviators holds up a cardboard cup to the irate ‘technically not’ barn manager and shouts, “I brought you breakfast, bitch!”

The bitch, clad in a gray pair of gym shorts with pink piping down the sides and a plain black tank top, rounds the car, rips the drivers side door open and starts beating the driver, making him spill coffee all over himself and the interior of his car. Just as Levi’s about to laugh, the door to the house opens and makes him remember himself. Erwin comes out and says good morning in Levi’s direction first, stoically ignoring the calamity. Erna, like a small, wiry, single-minded demon, drags the boy in the car out onto the gravel and starts slapping at the forearms he’s protecting his face with. Erwin goes, “Good morning, Reed, how are you?” as if this is all perfectly normal. 

For one full day, Levi had thought he’d escaped crazy horse people. He sighs to himself.

As he walks past, the little dark brunette girl pulls the man she was just screaming at up and tells him, “You’re putting in a day of work for this you spoiled little shit. Fucking predator. Don’t act so fucking pleased with yourself.”

He smiles down at her and teases, “Fine, but I wouldn’t let Eren ride today.”

She screeches and Levi can hear her little fists connecting again as he walks into the barn with Erwin right behind him, so he tells him, “I want to try that Oldenburg stallion.”

“Fox?”

“The shithead?”

“Sounds right.”

The one he didn’t try on Saturday because he wanted to see whether the girl would fall off of him without a saddle. He walks down the aisle of the barn, looking for the fucker, and just as he finds the right stall and goes to open the door, the boy who was getting his ass handed to him in the driveway slides right in with a brush box and a bridle, saying, “I can get him ready for you, Sir.”

Reed, as Erwin introduces the smarmy fuck, used to work there. Levi wonders how many more characters are in this fucking cast and if they just keep getting worse. He has to admit that Reed turns out to be a much more competent groom than Eren. Before Erwin can even finish asking him about sitting down to plan a show schedule, his horse is nearly ready. 

Levi’s answer is, “I'll show wherever you say, as you’re ready. I’ll ride the younger ones,” he says, as Reed takes his saddle from his hands to finish tacking up Fox, “and if there’s anything worth taking along to try to qualify, would do some schooling shows to see where their heads are.”

Erwin nods, and seems to look at him like he’s thinking hard about something. Levi deadpans, “What?”

“That’s a lot of riding…”

Levi shrugs his shoulders and shakes his head, like that’s obvious, what’s your point? But Reed is already handing him his horse, so he says as he's taking the reins and walking, “Yeah, so?”

“Do you really want to ride in the smaller classes? Where there’s no prize money? I can only pay you in a percentage of winnings.”

“I know that.”

“So you would be riding for free.”

“I’m not dim.”

“I’m sorry, I wasn’t saying --”

“It’s free practice,” he turns to the man catching up to him, “Why would I expect to get paid for it?”

“Because… you’re… you?”

“I need to keep riding or I’m not me anymore,” Levi tells him wisely.

Erna hears all of this, because she’s in the washroom, leaning on the washing machine, and eavesdropping, thinking about some younger horses who are mature enough to go to some schooling shows. She can offer him a group of five, the most they can fit in Erwin’s trailer, that she thinks are good prospects personally. She would have brought them to a schooling show herself a long time ago if the whole horse show scene didn’t make her want to open her wrists with a dull knife. 

The pair get too far down the driveway for her to hear anymore, so she grabs her own saddle from the rack, and goes to get one of the horses on schedule to be exercised. Reed passes her on his way to follow Levi and Erwin and he flashes a big, toothy, mischievous grin at her. She suddenly realizes she probably gave him exactly what he wanted when she thought she was punishing him with hard labor: a chance to watch Levi Ackerman ride and talk to him. 

She sticks her tongue out at him and he flips his middle finger up at her as he walks out. She sees Eren getting a horse to turnout and she tells him to shadow his boyfriend and fucking learn something. She’ll find a way to make this a productive day if it kills her.

All she fucking asks is that everyone shows up to work on time. She doesn’t even care that she works her ass off for this place and nobody appreciates her. She even embarrassed herself and rejected the scary sexy man - who won’t even look at her now - for this fucking farm and all she gets for it is a lot of shit. She explains all of this, not so calmly, to Valentina, a young bay mare she needs to take out for some exercise, but she relaxes more and more as she brushes the dirt out of the horse’s coat and goes through the familiar motions of putting on her saddle and bridle, getting her half chaps zipped up her calves, scooping her helmet off of the ground on her way out of the stall, and using the half wall just outside the side door to mount up. She feels automatically better once she’s sitting on any horse’s back, young or old, skinny or fat, green or pro, every horse is a good horse and makes her feel settled, and secure, and right, in a way that nothing else does. 

A piece of her hair falls out of her helmet and she tries to tuck it back in. Her horse, alert and energetic, picks its head up and pricks its ears forward. Erna listens, too. Tries to hear if there is anything to hear, and thinks she hears a grunt or a shout or both, followed by the distinct and unmistakable slice of riding crop through air, the  _ thwack _ of it connecting with a flank. 

She has to give Valentina a few kicks to get her to run in the direction of the sound. The mare is smarter than her and hesitant. When she trots to a stop in front of Erwin, who looks horrified that she’s there at all, she tries to make her eyes wide and says, “She just took off with me. Totally out of control. Oops. So, hi, what’s going on?”

Reed laughs while Erwin cringes. Erna narrows her eyes at Levi beating the shit out of Fox with a riding crop in front of one of the jumps, obviously angry over a refusal. 

“Erna, get out of here.”

She snaps back at Erwin, “What did he do to deserve that?”

Erwin points across the driveway, trying to shoo her away before she can run her mouth, but for once, surprisingly, she keeps herself silent when the other rider comes over to ask Reed off to the side if he can go get a different bit for Fox’s bridle. He asks for something with a wire twist. Erna can picture exactly the bit he’s asking for and thinks it’s more like a barbaric thing made of four little pieces of twisted metal rather than a training aid, but she’s not the professional. 

As Reed is starting off to go get it from the barn, Erna turns to look at Levi, and takes him in as the reactive, spoiled, entitled jackass that she’s judged him to be, because to her mind, if a horse refuses a fence, you take some personal accountability and don’t blame the animal for the whole of it seeing as you’re supposed to be up there guiding the damn thing. She forgets all about the sleepless night she had, worrying about whether she fucked things up with him so hard that he would quit on Erwin, and with narrowed eyes and all of the natural malice and disgust she is possessed of anytime she sees a rider putting too much blame on their horse for their own mistakes, she tells him, “You don’t  _ need _ a stronger bit if you sit back and ride off your seat.”

Reed literally stops and turns around to see how Levi will respond. Erwin is broken out of his wide-eyed, terrified expression when he notices Reed’s footsteps halt and the older man turns around to shoot him a severe look that makes Reed think better and run up the driveway. Erwin turns back and motions for Erna to move her ass too. She pouts down at him from up on Valentina’s back, and is about to start defensively asking what she said that is so wrong, though she knows full well. But before Erwin can give her a stern word that will send her scurrying off like her friend, Levi tilts his head at her and asks with a deathly cold calmness, “Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to?”

Erwin has to grab the reins and turn Erna’s horse around in a swift 180, but once she isn’t facing the object of her anger anymore she’s easier to reason with and goes off to the barn on her own. After she’s all the way across the road, Erwin walks back over to Levi and Foxfire and apologizes for… well, everything. 

Levi asks him, genuinely, “What the hell is wrong with that girl?”   
  


That girl catches up to Reed at a brisk walk. He congratulates her on making yet another guy hate her, and she didn’t even need to fuck this one. Her methods must be getting advanced. 

Erna, finally having a height advantage on him, being on a horse, smacks him upside his head hard as she passes.

  
  


After insulting his riding ability, Erna avoids Levi for the rest of the day. It’s not hard. She knows all the hiding places around the farm. 

When work is over, everyone leaves. Reed takes Eren some-fucking-where, Erna couldn’t care less, as long as he isn’t late to work again tomorrow. Armin takes Eren’s car to go pick up Annie for a real date. Mikasa goes to the gym, to her two kickboxing classes in a row - and Erna’s never been more in awe of a person’s stamina. She wants to be productive like that, but she can’t. She’s exhausted, filled with frustration, over herself, Levi, his stupid sexy voice, his fucking attitude. Why does he have to be such an asshole? Why does he have to be exactly the kind of rider she hates, but so fuckable?

She’s so over it.

She’s just going to jerk off to her memory of him kissing her shoulder one more time and then she’s more than over it. This crush has turned out to be incredibly disappointing.

Levi, alternatively, is just now developing a crush, unwillingly. His adverse reaction that he has to the light, fluttery feeling in his stomach is anger and indignance. He dives headfirst into denial immediately and texts Farlan on his way home, “Your future wife is a fucking bitch.”

He thinks it’s only because there are so many reasons he shouldn’t do it that he wants her in the first place anyway. It would be a dick move to his daft friend. He’d have a hell of a time working with her and fucking her at the same time because she clearly doesn’t know anything about horses. Erwin treats her like a daughter and that could get messy really fast. They’d have to hide it and there would be a high risk of getting caught, and fuck he wants to now. He knows he’s an idiot, but he still wants to because he fucking shouldn’t and because he wants to lick her thighs after they’re sore from riding him for hours. He wants those quick little fingers scraping at his scalp while he licks circles over her clit, and there’s very little that common sense can do about that. 

Farlan texts him back. He sees the notification just as he’s getting out of the car. 

“ *strong, independent woman ”

She thinks that all horses should be ridden in light little snaffle bits like sensitive fucking snowflakes. She accused him of not knowing his fucking basics - like sit the fuck back in the saddle. She rode that stallion better than he could - even bareback - and he doesn’t know how or where she gets the fucking right and it’s been driving him crazy. 

He’s getting on Fox again tomorrow. With a harsher bit. To prove a point. 

When tomorrow comes he has to find someone to tack up his horse. It’s dead quiet around the farm, Erwin doesn’t even come out of the house on cue when he pulls up. The barn looks empty, but there are signs of work having been done, like a stray lead rope hanging on a stall, lines of water darkening the cement, hay littering the ground. 

He balances his saddle on his hip and walks down the long aisle of the barn. Stalls are cleaned. Horses seem settled. He finally finds activity out the back of the barn, in the nearest corner of the foals pasture. Erna is with Eren and another kid, trying to hold a foal that isn’t thrilled with the whole idea of being held. 

He walks over and, when he’s closer, he can see that they’re trying to shove syringes of ivermectin paste down the foals throats to worm them for the year. Erna is doing the holding, the blond guy with them is doing the worming, and Eren seems to be standing around pretty uselessly, so he gets his attention with an “Oi.”

Erna’s head snaps up just as quickly as the groom’s, and as Eren is turning to run to him, she shouts, “Don’t you fucking dare!” while she struggles with the foal trying to get out of her grasp. 

Eren stops, equidistant between them, terrified to move a step one way or the other. 

Levi slowly tilts his head at her and his eyelids lower as she narrows hers at both of them and hisses, “I need him today. Brushes, pads, and bridles are in the washroom.”

He wants to ask if she thinks he’s some kind of barn brat who hangs out brushing horses and plaiting their fucking manes. He’s there to work. He rides, he leaves, and he has never been fucking asked to brush, tack up, or cool out his own mount when he’s traveling. It occurs to him that his uncle would be fucking gleeful to see this moment. He’s always makes him do all of this shit if he’s riding at home, says he’s too spoiled. 

She leverages her forearm against the ginger-chestnut-coated foal’s neck and yanks at the rope attached to his halter while the blond kid pops the top off of a tube of worming paste. She asks over her shoulder, “Do you remember how to tack up a horse?” 

The fucking nerve.

He throws his helmet at Fox’s stall and thinks that she and Farlan fucking deserve each other. Grumbles the whole time he is grabbing up an armful of brushes, saddle pads, a girth and a bridle. Does he remember how to tack up a horse? Fucking bitch. 

He still wants to fuck her just as badly, only in a completely different way. Instead of wanting to make her shudder and clamp her thighs around his head while he worships her cunt, he simply wants to fuck her mouth violently, just to shut her up with his cock. He wants to fuck her so that she can’t fucking talk. He wants to fuck her like she's barely even a person.

It’s hard to maintain that feeling as he gets to work. It’s hard in general to be angry around a horse, unless it’s anger directed at that horse for doing something fucking violent and stupid, like Fox is about to do about every five minutes. He gives the stallion a slap on the nose when he goes to bite his side when he thinks he isn’t paying attention, and he growls, “Someone should have fucking gelded you.”

Fox cow-kicks defensively at the suggestion and Levi teases him, reaching for him with the curry comb again, “If there’s a knife around here I’ll do the honors myself, you prick.”

He doesn’t like riding inside indoor arenas - they’re too small and stifling and dusty - but he turns left to go out the back of the barn because that indoor is right next to the foals pasture and he’s still offended about her daring to assume he didn’t know how to put his own fucking saddle on a horse. He wants her to see that he does. 

He looks for her reaction, which is to willfully ignore him. Eren, however, snaps to attention and runs to turn the lights on in the indoor for him, which does catch her attention and make her glare. Levi, on a sudden whim, asks Eren to move the mounting block from the corner to the doorway, and watches Erna’s reaction. 

He asks if those are speakers in the corners, is there a radio around here, could you turn it on, is there a thermostat in that viewing room, can you move this jump, set that one higher, get those standards and make this one an oxer. As he mounts up and adjusts his stirrups he is reaching around his mind for the next truly asinine thing he could bother the kid with, but Erna finally comes, grabs him up by the arm, and twists it behind his back. Eren winces and hisses in pain while the much shorter girl steers him toward the door and pushes him outside, back in the direction of the foals. 

Levi straightens up, expecting some more fight from her than what she gives after she turns back around to face him. He thought she would be less reserved without Erwin around, but she keeps her temper tightly under control while she looks up at him and says, “I see what you’re doing, and if it’s because you’re mad at me, then fine, but I need to train that kid. He’s your show groom and if you keep this up he won’t even know how to clean a bridle and you’ll only be making things harder for yourself.”

And she walks away, very maturely, making him feel about three feet tall on the back of a giant fucking animal that is now bobbing its head because it hates to stand still for even a fucking second. He gives Fox a yank on the reins and tells him to behave him-fucking-self, sighs, and shakes his head as he watches her walk away. 

He exercises Fox for an hour, which is about forty minutes longer than he’s spent on any one animal in a very long time. He needs to go all the way back to basics, trying to figure out what he does that makes the fucker so intransigent. He bucks going into the canter, drops his shoulder in the turns, and tries to pull the reins from Levi’s grasp every moment he thinks his rider isn’t paying attention. 

Horses are so fucking sensitive and so fickle and so full of their very own personalities, it’s barely ever worth the effort to try and figure why one likes a certain rider and not another. It could be anything from the way they position their hands while riding to the way their pheromones smell, but the fact is that you can have a horse move and perform beautifully for one rider, and then try to kill the next, and that's perfectly common. He shouldn’t be so fucking offended by this one trying to kill him, but he is. He’s taking it very personally. 

His next lap, he notices Erwin standing in the tall, wide arena doorway, and he stops to tell him, “Your manager has a rude fucking mouth.”

It makes the man wince. “I’m sorry, I’ll talk to her.”

“No, just get her out here,” Levi sighs with disgust.

She flounces out of the barn eventually like a petulant brat, like she’s in trouble. She is, in general, because he is fucking annoyed, but all he wants to ask is, “How did you ride this fucker?”

She smirks up at him and she’s lucky he isn’t on the ground because he’d slap that right off her smug face before she gets a chance to say, “You can’t tell him what to do, you have to ask him politely.”

He squints at her. His nostrils flare. He says, “Fuck off,” to her cryptic nonsense, “That doesn’t mean anything.”

She shrugs at him. He thinks she’s a bold, smart-mouthed little brat, and he wants to know if she got a good lay would she still be such a bitch? Luckily, he’s not impulsive enough to ask it, but he wants to, just to wipe the cocky smirk off her face. He fucks off and pushes Fox into a trot so that he won’t be tempted to say anything worse. 

Erwin invites him to the house after he decides he’s done riding, makes him tea, and they sit at the kitchen table and try to work out a show schedule. More than half of it is already done - the tedious shit like compiling dates and prize money and registration fees, was done the day he showed up apparently, by that girl outside who drives him mad. She’s some kind of frenetic, temperamental, little machine, who can ride better than him, doesn’t know anything about horses, and likes this farm enough to refuse to fuck him even though he  _ knows  _ she wants to.

She does. It’s actually kind of a problem as she goes back to the barn to help finish worming horses. She has Armin and Eren at the point now where they can make a semi-decent team together, with Eren holding the horses and Armin getting the syringe down their throats, Mikasa stepping in if a horse is too strong for Eren. It lets Erna move on her own and faster, plugging away at the rate of two horses per minute. Having help always slows her down while she has to supervise and train the help. She does not finish up work early most days the way she expected she would be able to with three other people working with her. 

She’s good, but she isn’t so good at worming horses that she can just not pay attention at all when she goes to grab the nose of a dark bay thoroughbred that towers over her. She can’t just space out and daydream about Levi asking her again who the fuck she thinks she’s talking to, but this time he’s choking her and slamming his hips into her, and back in reality she gets slammed into the wall with her right shoulder pinned between the boards and a horse’s giant head, with her hand unable to reach for its mouth to administer the ivermectin paste. She punches with her left and shouts, “You fucking whore!”

She hates this horse. It was a yearling when she started. Six years old now, and she’s always been fucking stupid except when it comes to shit like this. She’s smart enough to pin Erna to the wall with her big stupid head rather than try to run away in the small space of the box stall. Erna hooks her left thumb into the young mare’s mouth, pushing back for the expanse of soft gum between incisors and molars, pressing against the ironically named Zen’s tongue to shock and annoy her and get her to take a step back, then her right hand shoots for her mouth, plunges the syringe inside, and her left hand, now covered in saliva, cups and pushes Zen’s chin up so that she has to swallow. It all happens in an instant. Mikasa is coming over to help and it’s already done. Erna is tossing the plastic plunger out through the bars of the stall and spitting at the ground, with a spiteful, “Fuck you.”

That was her fault, she thinks, as she grabs up the clipboard on the floor of the aisle and marks a check next to Zen’s name with the date.

She has to wait for Mikasa and Armin to finish before she can go worm the horses in the pastures on the other half of the farm. She cocks her hip and taps her leg with an unopened package of ivermectin paste. She might need Eren, too. Four people to hold the four two-year-old mares who are gonna be difficult, and then four people to try to catch and hold Danger, who is going to be an absolute nightmare.

Levi comes out of the house while she waits, all dark silky hair, sharp eyes, and hard muscles. She tries not to look at him, but it’s hard not to watch. He always has that way of moving, like he’s hunting her but not trying to hide it the way a good predator would. His light, cold grey eyes make her skin go through the extremes - too hot, face burning, then suddenly frozen, shuddering and hugging her arms around her waist. 

He almost looks like he’s going to say something again, and she dreads it with anticipatory butterflies in her stomach, because she’s sure whatever it is will keep her up with her hand between her thighs again tonight. He only keeps an eye on her as he goes to his car and makes her feel exposed and painfully shy just over being looked at. Her face heats up again and she blushes up to her eyes as she turns away to face the inside of the barn. 

She feels immeasurable relief when he’s gone. 

He doesn’t feel any relief until he gets back to his house, strips, and jerks off in the mirrored shower to a mental image of the way she pouts after needing to be put in her place. He imagines her pouting like that after he’s covered her lips in cum. His thumb swipes over the head of his cock, and he slows down and goes back to thinking about what she’d look like looking up at him under those long eyelashes while he fucks her mouth, tears welling up and lining her cheeks while she sputters and gags on his length hitting the back of her throat. 

He’s noticed the way her eyes sparkle every time he has something harsh to say to her. He thinks she’d like dirty talk, and he would love to tell her what a filthy, teasing, fucking whore she is. It would be cathartic to be able to make her beg for every achingly hard inch of his cock like the little slut he knows she’s hiding from him under that indecipherable veneer. 

He has a new appreciation for the mirrored bathroom, watching himself rub his palm over the end of his cock to slick it with precum for better slide. He leans against the mirror behind him and can see his body from almost every angle, and, ultimately, ends up climaxing to himself instead, because he is that vain. 

While he’s rinsing the cum from his hand, Erna is about fifteen miles away, twisting her body in what’s supposed to pass for a full length mirror hung up on the inside of the bathroom door, trying to check the back of her thighs and make sure she didn’t miss anything shaving. 

When she comes out, Eren asks where she’s going, because she’s wearing a dress. That’s what she gets for trying to look nice. 

“Nowhere.”

She shouldn’t have taken them out the other night. She was in a good mood because she had a nice car to drive for the first time in her life, but now she regrets letting them think that she might be friendly. She slips her feet into her paddock boots on the way out, kicking most of the dirt off of them against the porch steps before hopping to the ground 

She likes the view walking up the path between paddocks. The lines of fence beside her point straight at the side of the barn, bisected and symmetrical. She hangs left when the fence ends, ducking under the hanging boughs of a willow tree that hides the side of the main house until she’s out from under it and only steps away from the blue and white side door. Erwin’s already sitting there at the kitchen table, watching the two-year-old horses play chicken running along the edge of the steep cliffside within their pasture. 

He gets up to let her in, but blocks her in the door for a moment. “You look nice.” He sounds careful like he’s trying not to sound suspicious.

She huffs at him. “I never get a reason to dress up.”

“Didn’t say you shouldn’t, just wondered if there was a reason.”

“The reason is that if I don’t wear this dress now It’s just going to get eaten by moths in my fucking closet because I’m gonna die alone.”

Erwin tries not to smirk looking down at her. “Dark.”

She pushes past him. “Don’t look so happy about it.” She goes for the table, squinting at the papers he was just looking at. “What have you been talking about in here? You haven’t been telling me anything.”

“I’ve been too busy trying to keep you from chasing him away.” He automatically goes for the cabinet, gets her bottle of whiskey, pours her a glass and leaves it on the table. For five years, this is what they’ve done. If she has the urge to go out and drink until her brain will black out, then she knocks on that side door, and she gets significantly less drunk with Erwin instead.

She looks at Levi’s notes - she knows that chicken-scratch isn’t Erwin’s - and at the prize lists fanned out over the table. He says, “I had a feeling you’d be up here soon.”

“The fuck are you talking about?” she mutters, trying to find what they’re planning in this mess of paper and whether she should be preparing the younger horses for some early summer schooling shows. 

Erwin answers, “I appreciate you not losing your temper more than you have.”

Finally, her fists pound the table and she shrieks, “He’s such an asshole! Why is he such an asshole?!”

He can’t help laughing a little, but he tries to remain serious. “Don’t talk to him, then. Don’t watch him ride. Why is that so hard?”

She spins around and breath hisses out her nose like a dragon. She drops her shoulder and shakes her head in a small tantrum and goes, “I don’t knooowwww!” in a high whine. 

He shrugs. “Don’t talk to him tomorrow.”

“Yeah, okay.”

“Or ever again, if you can’t say anything nice.”

She rolls her eyes at him. “Fine.” She picks up her glass and polishes it off in two seconds. While Erwin refills it, she asks, “Do you wanna watch Antiques Roadshow?”

His turn to roll his eyes at her lovingly. She catches him and defends herself by saying that she likes watching sincere nerds talk about the dumb shit they found in their aunt’s attics. Then she goes and curls up on the couch in her dress and snatches the remote off the coffee table. Erwin follows her after getting himself a glass of whiskey, figuring he’s been dealing with enough stress thanks to her that he deserves a break too. 

When he sits down in the leather armchair, she tells him while fixated on the tv, “I didn’t do the thing. I know you were wondering.”

“What thing?”

“I didn’t fuck him.”

He rubs his temples. “Oh my god.”

“What? I said I didn’t.”

“You don’t have to tell me that. Please don’t tell me that.”

“God, you’re so boring.”


	8. chapter ten/eleven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here there be smut

All Erna has to do is not watch Levi ride. Then she’ll have no reason to say anything about how fucking bad he is at it for someone who gets paid so much to do it. She coaches herself mentally, just after hitting the lights in the washroom, to just not let him get under her skin today. She is too good for this. She is a mature and self-secure adult and she can hold herself with grace and composure if that handsome asshole says anything offensive and wrong.

Erwin helps, genuinely, by giving her lists upon lists of things to do. Mostly things that will keep her busy in the feed room and the garage and the hay loft, looking for, logging, and organizing every single piece of equipment they will need for every horse show while her three coworkers handle the daily chores. She arms herself with a pad of paper, a pen, and a roll of masking tape for labeling, and tries to trust the others to keep everything running smoothly without her. 

It’s a boring, difficult, and arduous job to find all of the shit she packed away over two months ago without much care for organization because she was working alone and was too fucking tired to do anything but shove everything somewhere out of the way. She spends hours breaking her back, digging through piles, dragging heavy things, and reorganizing. 

She saves the worst for last and the morning’s end finds her in the hot, dusty hay loft, looking for a collection of wool cooler sheets for the show horses, monogrammed with the farm’s logo, in blue and white. She remembers she put them in a couple of the tack trunks up here so that they wouldn’t get eaten by the rats, but she can’t remember specifically which tack trunks. 

She looks around, anxious about the cooler sheets, they’re the one thing Erwin actually spends some money on. The dark blue is a custom dye that he can only get from one place and the sheets are a little expensive. Erna’s sewn them with thread to match as best she could when they’ve torn at their seams and she’s kept them in pretty good condition. They’ve lost maybe two of them over the years, which is pretty good as far as horse blankets go, especially on this large a farm. 

That reminds her she needs to find the winter blankets for the November and December shows, too. She starts opening tack trunks with the one closest to her, digs through it, closes it, and as she goes down the row, she holds her breath as much as is bearable, because she can literally see the dust in the air around her, especially in every beam of light weakly shining through the windows caked with dirt, and she’d rather not coat her lungs with it. She hates the hay loft. She can’t imagine it’s healthy to breathe up here. The rats live up here - well, technically underneath her feet - in between the ceiling of the barn and the floor of the loft. She doesn’t know much about it, as she’s never seen one of them. She’s only ever heard their feet scrabbling above her head all the time, and it makes her suspect there’s both lepto and asbestos in the air. Of course that would be how she dies. Just breathing in rat shit and asbestos particles while trying to do her stupid job. Fucking typical.

She finds the cooler sheets, folded and packed into two rubbermaid trunks. She checks for signs of rodent teeth marks, but they’re as clean and perfect as when she packed them away. She sets them on the dusty floor, she’ll have to wash them for good measure anyway, and she gets on her knees with her pen and clipboard, checking how many of each size she’s supposed to have. 

Her lips taste like salt when she sticks her tongue out in concentration. It’s noon and the heat in the loft is stifling. She licks the sweat clinging to her upper lip and sighs. When she hears steps coming up, they sound heavy, she assumes they’re Erwin’s and shouts over her shoulder to him, “I found the cooler sheets.”

The deep, dangerous voice she’s supposed to be avoiding answers back sarcastically, “Good for you?”

Her skin prickles when she startles and whips her head around to see Levi for the first time today, bright against the dim loft, in a white polo and white breeches, black field boots covering his calves, looking down at her casually as if he’s bored. “Do you have any tack nosebands?”

They used to. She’d found them up here a long time ago, unused and covered in dust, a training relic from Erwin’s father’s days. A deceptively normal-looking noseband on the outside, hiding metal studs underneath, designed to deliver pain to a horse every time they try to lift their head too high when coupled with a martingale. She would thoroughly enjoy telling him that she threw them in the fucking trash years ago, but she isn't even supposed to be looking at him.

She mutters, “You had no problem treating Eren like your bitch yesterday, why don't you ask him if _he_ knows where one is?” then she looks down and pretends to be busy so that he won't see her cringe at her own out of control mouth. 

“I did. He said to ask you,” he answers, cold and low and toneless. 

She sighs. Of course he did. She finally reins in her sarcasm and says neutrally, “We don’t have any,” without looking up, searching around for the buckles that mark the front of the sheet she’s sitting on where she’ll be able to find a tag and see what size it is, thinking he’ll go away now.

“Do you know where I could get one then?” he drones like she's putting him out. 

Hearing the annoyance in his voice only makes her feel very annoyed right back at him. She was just trying to get some work done and Google exists. She feels the brat within her take control and take what she estimates is a fifty-fifty shot as she says loud and clear, “Siri.” To her delight, the telltale tone pings and she lifts her face to ask Levi’s right pocket, “Where’s the nearest tack shop?”

Siri begins to tell Levi where he could find a saddlery and thus perhaps a tack noseband to torture Erna’s horses with while she looks back down to start her count of the cooler sheets over again. He gets his iPhone out of his pocket and silences the robotic voice, before stepping forward and telling her, “Someone needs to put you in your place.”

He’s walking over to her, adding new footprints in the dust, and she feels forced by his imposing presence to stop what she’s doing and look up at him from down on her knees. She tries to hide how taken aback she is that he had the balls to say it bluntly to her face like that, and she responds, with her chin tilted high, “You couldn’t even put a horse in its place without the help of a tack noseband, so don’t act like --”

He cuts her off by grabbing her up by her wrist and lifting her to her feet. Heart racing, she squeals and shouts and punches him in the chest, thinking that he means to hurt her, but instead he braces an arm against her lower back, curls a possessive hand around the nape of her neck and pulls her body close to his. Erna goes as still as a deer in headlights, dark blue eyes staring wide at him as his breath fans over her lips and time holds still. He kisses her hungrily while she’s still in shock, and staring. Her eyelids finally flutter closed when he nips at her lip with his teeth. That makes her lean into him and lace her fingers around his neck, wrists lazily hanging over his shoulders. She tilts her head, pushes her tongue past his lips, and tastes his bitter mouth. 

Once he feels her give in, he wastes no time pressing his hand to her lower back, bringing her hips closer with an urgency that makes their teeth clash together. Erna winces. Her fingers smoothe over the sandpaper stubble of his undercut as she tries to slow him down and make him follow her pace, which is slow because _she_ knows that what he’s rushing toward is inevitable and she wants to take her time as she pushes her tongue into his mouth, only to get bitten again when his attention is distracted by his own attempt to grope his way underneath the back of her tank top. She feels the growl vibrate low in his throat when he finds the tight elastic of her sports bra that makes it frustratingly impossible to take off quickly and easily. She smirks about it, laughs at his frustration and the clumsiness of the whole situation, until he pulls away from her and leans down to take a nipple in his teeth, through her shirt and the offending bra. He bites carefully at first and she sighs, rolling her hips, arching her back, scraping her fingers up his undercut and into his surprisingly soft hair. Erna feels gratified for a moment, and is disarmed enough that she tilts her head back and sighs until he increases pressure and is clamping down hard, his teeth cruelly denting her aureola. She lets out a shocked gasp, her nails scratch at his scalp, then loosen when that causes him to bite harder. She yips and snarls. He moves onto the other nipple without any warmup, biting it right away without the benefit of teasing first and bracing his hand against her lower back to keep her from escaping. She tangles her fingers in his inky hair and pulls him back up, jerking him by the roots, until his face is level with hers again. 

She likes his lips. They’re softer than they look. He isn’t good at kissing her with them, so she twists her hand in his hair and holds him still so that she can brush her lips over his and feel that soft velvet drag. 

He moans low as she slows him down. His hands squeeze both of her small breasts then slide down over her ribs, pressing like he’s shaping her waist. His calloused thumbs drag along the outside edge of her abs and push her away, to make her easier to look at. He’s visual. She’d figured that by the thirtieth time she'd caught him watching her. But she can’t help but resist being looked at by his sharp, probing eyes. The way he looks at her makes her feel too vulnerable, like he can see more of her than she's even aware of in herself. She’s desperate to close that distance, making herself seem terribly needy and hungry for him when she reaches for his belt, using her deceptively strong biceps to pull him back in close. 

Running with what seems like her extremely enthusiastic consent, he hooks his fingers in the waist of her shorts, pushing them down with barely a touch to pool at her feet - they never fit right, Erna thinks to herself, hand-me-downs. With fast, clumsy impatience, his hand slides inside her unglamorous cotton panties - reminding her that she’s at work - in a hayloft - and that this is wrong. She whines and squirms, pressing her thighs together while his fingers reach down and curl in search. The way he’s going, she expects that he’s about to push them inside her too rough, and too fast, and she whines as the anticipation of the pain makes her wet, because at heart she’s a conflicted masochist.

He doesn’t live up to her expectation, shockingly, Levi reaches no further than her clit, and while the pads of his fingers may be rough, what he does with them is smooth and has her physically melting as they dance over her clit and rob her of her ability to do anything but press her forehead to his shoulder, moaning and gasping for breath with her mouth against his collarbone. Soon he has her whining and rocking her hips, and almost fucking drooling, and he knows it - she can feel him breathe a slight, condescending, laugh over it in his chest - and that makes her feel a soul-satisfying rush of humiliation. Her cunt gets so wet that his fingertips are getting slick and sliding easier, slipping and rubbing gentle circles over her clit, making her feel that much more desperate for him to ruin her - to make her feel something other than frustration for once.

She finally lifts her face from his shoulder, arching her back and snaking up to focus on his mouth again, and suck on his lower lip. He grunts while she tries to explore his mouth with her tongue. He has that bitter aftertaste that she thinks is from too much tea, but it’s earthy and good, and she feels the tingle of butterflies in her stomach over how much she likes it despite the bitterness. 

True to form, he has to make kissing a contest, and he fights her tongue for dominance, cups her ass with both hands and lifts her. She cooperates by circling her legs around his waist and her arms around his shoulders, willing to lose enthusiastically, making small circles with her hips, rubbing herself against the pronounced bulge in his clean, white breeches. He husks a low, soft laugh in her ear and says, “Knew you wanted it.”

So what if she did? Chest rising and falling as she gasps for breath, “You’re such a fucking idiot.”

“So’re you.”

She wants to tell him to shut his stupid, perfect fucking mouth, but he’s lowering her and she’s more concerned about not letting her skull smack the floorboards while he kneels between her legs and lets go of her. She kicks while he pulls at her underwear, ripping them off over her shoes, then he slaps her left leg out of the way like it’s an inconvenience, holds her right ankle to his shoulder, and reaches between her legs, making her gasp at the sharp sting of his finger pushing inside her wet folds, surprising her with that pain she was anticipating a minute ago and forgot to expect.

Her eyes narrow to half closed, annoyed at the inconvenient realities of the situation. There’s a rough, wool dress sheet underneath her scratching her skin, which is barely better than the dirty floor underneath it. His fingers are too long and too rough and and it feels like he’s stabbing at her. She whines and her muscles twitch at the discomfort of the sudden fullness. She's suddenly anxious about whether he washed his hands before this.

None of that means she doesn’t want it. She wants him very badly, just in a very specific way that will be quick and hard and fast. So she reaches for him, for his cock, practiced fingers flicking the button of his breeches open with one hand, dragging the taut zipper down without difficulty. He helps her by pulling his underwear down and letting his cock fall to point at her with a smug grin, mistaking her impatience for eagerness. 

She tilts her head and looks for a second. It’s actually pretty. She’s never seen a pretty one. His cock looks the way she wanted it to look in her head, smooth and straight and not too big, but a couple inches girthier and longer than her last disappointing fuck buddy. She’s struck by how much she doesn’t hate the way it looks and pushes up on an elbow a little and reaches for it, but he drives a second finger deep inside her and makes her gasp and stop herself, looking up at him as if betrayed. He starts fucking her harder with them, thumb rubbing her own wetness over the hood of her clit in tight, little circles, making her feel like a needy mess. 

Her lower lip goes slack and her eyelids get heavy while he tells her that she’s so wet, she has a sarcastic thought about stating the obvious. She protests that it, “Doesn’t mean anything, you fu--”

“No?” he asks, looking down at her with leering disdain as his skilled fingers make her twitch and moan. They move to circle the base of his cock and he angles it to push the velvety head against her wet hole. “What about the way you’re moaning like a fucking whore? Does that mean anything?” 

He looks at her like he thinks he’s that much better than her for making her forget to be quiet. Erna glares up at him and clamps her hand over her own mouth, as he pushes his hips forward and his cock slips against her, sliding over her lips. With intense, growing frustration, she bucks her hips and reaches for him on impulse, while her hips rock in a shallow, needy rhythm all on their own. He sympathizes with her impatience and in a second has her ass lifted to his lap, holding her steady with one hand, he sheathes himself inside her with a grunt and a growl, and her free hand joins the other over her mouth, to aid in muffling the scream he fucks out of her. 

She feels his ass clench under her ankle, feels his growl vibrate through her bones, and he stabs at her, takes her hips in each hand, and fills her up, not taking any care to let her adjust. He fucks her like a whore on a pile of horse blankets and she can’t get enough of it, because for this one moment she feels full finally. 

After seeming to get over the initial, instinctual need to thrust deep into the tight, hot, wet, pulsing cunt between her legs, Levi recovers his wits, narrows his eyes at her, and rips her hands away from her mouth, taking one wrist at a time and pressing each to the floor beside her head. He looks down at her with that expression of arrogant disdain, like she’s nothing, so it doesn’t matter if anyone hears her scream while he's fucking her like the loud, little slut that she is.

After pinning her in her place with a look that makes her spine turn to liquid mercury, he lets his eyes leave hers, and he looks down at his cock sliding inside her. He starts slowing down, taking longer strokes, withdrawing so that she feels empty before he pushes all the way in deep again. He learns quickly that she hates that, because she doesn’t hide it and she expresses her complaints adamantly. She tries curling her free leg around his waist, to hold his hips to hers when he’s all the way deep inside, grinding her clit against his pubic bone before she's even conscious of what she's doing. He flashes her a smirk and pushes her hips to the floor, then he slowly pulls out until she can barely feel the tip of his cock inside her.

"Unhh," she whines behind her palm. She kicks at him with her heel and convulses in frustration, but just like in everything, he doesn’t seem to be bothered with making her frustrated. He looks down like he thinks it’s a good look on her, with that perpetual sarcastic sharpness to his grey eyes. 

He begins to fill her up again in one smooth, slow, devastatingly deep stroke, and she makes a noise that’s like a moan cut off by a maddened growl. She tries to buck her hips, but she can’t get leverage off anything. When she tries to take her right leg away from his shoulder, he grabs her ankle and bites her calf, but he doesn’t fuck her harder. He keeps going at his vain, slow pace as she groans about it. 

He obviously knows what she wants. With a depth of cruelty, he tells her, in between husking, growling breaths, “If you want it so bad, then beg for it.”

The corners of her eyes twitch. Her lips curl in absolute despisal and she reaches for him. He slaps her hands away. She tries to get her ankle off of his shoulder again, but he holds her calf tight. She looks up at him and demands through a wet voice, “Fuck me harder.” Definitely not anywhere close to begging in tone. 

He bares his teeth at her. He pulls out, and she whines, kicking at him with her left leg in a tantrum until he roughly lifts her hips and his palm slaps her ass hard once, and then twice. She looks up at him wide-eyed as his hand shoots for her hair, bending her leg painfully when he curls his back to lean down over her, straddling his right leg over her left when she tries to buck him off again. With her ponytail held tight in his fist, he demands slowly and clearly, “Look at me and say, ‘please.’”

She winces and whimpers submissively, whining and worrying her lower lip as her wet thighs open and her hips rock on their own. “Ple-e-e-ase.” Her voice bounces with her pelvis while she rubs herself against his thigh, too consumed with need to feel any loss of superiority about it.

He’s fair. He doesn’t ask anything else of her. He gives her his cock in one smooth stroke and begins to fuck her properly, the way she wanted, finally letting go of her leg to use both hands to grip her ass with vicious ferocity, leaving red marks the shapes of the pads of his fingers on her untanned skin. 

Levi’s anger doesn’t seem assuaged with her submission. He fucks her like every stroke fans his burning ego. Erna reaches and circles her arms around his shoulders, moaning into his neck and arching her back, squealing when he fucks her particularly deep, harder than she thought was possible. He tangles his fist in her hair again, ruining her ponytail, biting at her neck and throat with his sharp teeth, marking her where it will be difficult to hide while the rest of his fingers pull to try to spread her more open. 

He doesn’t last long. She doesn’t care. She didn’t want him to. It’s starting to hurt. The angle of him makes her feel too full and uncomfortable, like he's too big for her, but god forbid she says anything to let him know that and feed his extensive vanity. She cries out when he comes inside her, biting the juncture of her neck and shoulder hard, thrusting his hips and grunting while his cock twitches inside her. He can’t see the disgusted face she makes, and when he’s done, when he’s marked her thoroughly, he gives her a cocky look like he thinks that surprised gasp was a signal that she just came with him, but there’s no way she could ever with a quickie in a fucking hayloft. She’s offended at the very thought. He pulls out and she can feel his warm cum leaking out and cooling on her skin and she scrunches her nose and whines, “Oh my god…”

She cannot pull her shorts back on fast enough and she cannot look at him. She immediately never wants to see his smug smirk again. She makes a disgusted face at the empty feeling inside her and the fluids dripping down her thighs, and mutters, “Fuck. Now I have to get a plan B.”

She isn’t sure if he says sorry, but he makes some kind of noise, whether it’s words or not, she doesn’t notice it so much as she notices him reaching for something after zipping himself up, and she warns him, “If you are about to reach in your pocket and give me money after fucking me on a pile of blankets in a hay loft, I’m going to have to ask you to stop and reconsider your actions.”

He does stop. This time she is sure that he says, “Sorry,” as he slowly retracts his hand and returns it to his side. She knows he only intended to split the cost. She should just take it. But she has pride about some things when it suits her. 

He stands there like he doesn’t know what to do, like he’s never fucked a stablehand on a dirty barn floor before, which she very much doubts. She doesn’t think she’s met one pro equestrian who hasn’t tried to use their advantage to fuck someone. Only this is the first time it’s worked on her - something she’s growing quickly to feel shocked and ashamed and indignant about. While her fingers comb and fix her tangled ponytail, she motions at the steps behind him, and says, “You should go down first.” Doing her best impression of an aloof bitch, she looks for her pen, as if she’s going to get back to work. 

He does as she says, looking dazed, tucking his shirt back in, and descending the stairs while she turns to stand and stare at the light of the two tiny windows behind her. She waits until she feels like everything’s leaked down her leg and she wipes it off with the wool blanket he fucked her on. She stands there listening at the top of the steps, in the dark, holding the blanket in a ball in her arms, with her underwear stuffed in her pocket, trying to judge whether anyone could have heard that, and wishing that she didn’t always moan so loud. When she doesn’t hear any activity in the barn for a good amount of time, she goes down and does her walk of shame in private, stopping by the washroom to throw the blanket in the washing machine, and going down to the house with a black void between her legs. 

Hot water doesn’t ease the emptiness, but it turns her skin bright pink, glowing in the dark shower. She keeps the lights off and the blinds shut tight in her room. Her sweatpants are too hot and soft on her legs and she rolls them up over her knees. She happens to see herself in the mirror and frowns. Now that she’s caught sight of herself she doesn’t want to go to the pharmacy like this. Not in a pair of threadbare sweatpants and an off-white tank top, with a darkening bruise on her neck. She opens her closet. 

Every piece of clothing she owns is a hand-me-down from a roommate who happened to be a similar size, or bigger, the advantage to being petite. Anything she brought with her five years ago was ruined or thrown out a long time ago. She switches out her comfortable clothes for a pair of designer jeans and a t-shirt with the name of some fancy store she's never been inside emblazoned across it. 

She leaves with the knowledge that she only has $60.81 in her checking account. The pill is about forty if she also buys the ginger ale and saltines she's going to want when it makes her feel like shit. She pouts in line at the counter and feels sorry for herself about the sushi she was finally going to get for dinner because she's had a craving for almost two weeks straight. She should have taken Levi’s stupid money. It's nothing to him and would have significantly improved her depressing day. She could have had the security of an empty uterus, and also sushi. 

The pharmacist doesn't give her any shit, which is only lucky for the pharmacist, because Erna has no reservations about making a scene over her human rights and bodily autonomy in this CVS right now. She might even enjoy it. She huffs to herself as she gets rung up. She didn't even get to come. She's out forty bucks and she didn't even come. 

Her roommates seem to be out when she gets back, much to her relief, because she feels better when she gets demonstrative. She slams the cupboard in the kitchen as she gets herself a glass of water, kicks the garbage can and opens it while she tears the box open and tosses the instructions.

She thinks about Levi and how he fucks like he rides, with unearned confidence, like he thinks he's so good at it. She’s disgusted with herself, though validated. She may be an awkward idiot who can’t have a crush on a man without hating him and making him hate her… but she proved to herself that he does still want to fuck her, so that feels like a win. 

He texts her later, long after sunset, when he's probably in bed. She's out on her porch with more water, sipping slowly to calm her stomach. The light of her screen glows across her face as she reads: “Next time won't be in a fucking hay loft.” 

She sips. Her stomach does a flip, a side effect of whatever chemical reaction is happening inside her, and she presses her thumb over the buttons of her flip phone until it says, “There won't be a next time,” and hits the send button. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


At the house, Levi is in a complete daze, as he was from the second Erna sucked him in with the inescapable force of a black hole. As soon as he finally kissed her, after thinking about it for days, he utterly forgot why he ever went up to find her, almost proving it must have been a flimsy pretense from the beginning. 

He feels weird. Good, calm, utterly fucked, and weird. He’s never had a quickie like that and just walked away. It’s not like he’s warm and cuddly, but he’s at least not _that_ kind of prick. 

But she did tell him to. What was he gonna do? Argue again? That worked well the first time. Maybe he _should_ argue with her more.

He does, of course, replay it in his head as best he can. He went up there for something and she sucked him into an argument the way she fucking does, and then he blacks out. She makes him _that_ fucking angry. 

He’s blacked out before. That isn’t new and shocking. It’s just that normally it would be happening somewhere pre- to mid-fist fight and not when faced with a bratty little bitch with a fit body glowing and slick with sweat in a filthy hayloft. 

Thinking about it, he’s not surprised she made him that angry. He’s surprised he still fucked her anyway, being that angry. He’s almost glad that he can’t remember it in great detail. He only remembers how surprisingly wet she was… and her face, especially her eyes, that for once, never looked away from him. His abdomen tightens thinking about it. He remembers how badly she wanted it, even though he was trying to fuck her up, not to make it good for her. He feels dark and grim and monstrous deep in the pit of himself about it. Her reaction didn’t help. Like it was as normal as shaking hands. Not a word worth mentioning about it, just, ‘ _you should go down first._ ’

He thinks he feels used. 

A few hours later, exploring more of the weird house she tricked him into staying in, doing laundry, after the rawness of it has worn off, he thinks he probably wouldn’t mind feeling used all over again. 

He wrestles existentially with his phone. 

Is it dishonest to text her something nice? Because he isn’t nice and doesn’t want to set a precedent. Is it evil of him to try to convince her to come over? He opens his messages and suddenly remembers Farlan and his unanswered text about his and Isabel’s itinerary. 

“Fuck.”

Meanwhile, does he seem like a desperate, lovestruck twat if he invites Erna over right now because he wants to fuck her against the wall instead of on a dirty floor this time? How does he convey the difference between puppy love and a booty call? 

He’s garbage at words. Hates them. Hates anything to do with the fucking phone in the first place. 

He goes through the trouble of typing out several different messages, worrying about the implications of each of them. Too nice. Too romantic. Too cold. Too horny. 

“Next time won’t be in a fucking hayloft.” At least conveys that he would like to do that again, but doesn’t risk offending her by requesting that she come over and suck his cock like his personal on-call whore.

It’s a hell of a leap his heart does when she messages him back in seconds, his chest puffing out a little, because he honestly thinks she wants him that badly. He’s not surprised in the least until he opens and reads the message. And because he was feeling that high, the crash he experiences is long and hard. 

He tosses his phone to the couch. Fuck her anyway. He turns around to the bar behind him, then stops abruptly, goes back, grabs his phone, and types, “Did I do something wrong?” and is about to send it without even thinking. 

He says, “Fuck,” again, but more loudly this time, into the open, empty living room. 

Isabel would say this is his insecurity making him impulsive and stupid again. And anxious. She wouldn’t say that part. He does, because he feels insomnia creeping up his neck, wrapping talons around his nape while he looks down at the phone in his hand. He doesn’t send what he typed. He’ll ask her face to face. He’ll leave her alone to think about whether she means that, because she seemed pretty fucking hungry for him with her wet cunt and her sweet mouth. He’s that much more confused when suddenly, in a flash of memory, he recalls the way she made him slow down to really kiss her.

She rolled over him like a thunderstorm. He marked her neck with his teeth. She made him come harder than he has in his life. Why the fuck shouldn’t there be a next time? If this is her trying to be hard to get then he thinks that she’s doing it wrong. She literally begged him to fuck her. 

He doesn’t sleep. He watches the 2015 FEI World Cup in Barcelona, on the giant fuck-off flatscreen tv that he can’t watch during the day because there is no way to dim the glare from the two-story windows. Not that anything could be better than that view during the day anyway. He watches videos of his own rides, repeatedly, and picks apart every mistake, even on the winning rides. He studies the courses of the past fifteen grand prixs he’s done, pictures of their diagrams saved on his phone, and looks for places where turns could have been shaved or strides lengthened. It helps him to not think about her.

At four am - always his worst hour - his body tortures him as it finally starts to send the signals to wind down but his brain rebels. The sickly grey light of pre-dawn tells his autonomic nervous system to stay awake. He stands at the eighteen foot tall windows and looks out at the various colors of shadow in the expanse of overgrown field dotted with wild weedy shrubs and a scraggly, survivor of a shade tree here and there. He goes out to walk the perimeter of the 150 acre property, close to the dark wall of a forest enclosing the meadow out back, because his body won’t stop thinking danger. Because he’s made, biologically, for fight or flight, and the modern world doesn’t provide the adrenaline rushes that would serve to use that built up tension and diffuse it. He walks close to the night sounds that are unfamiliar. Different frogs making different trilling noises, different birds begin to greet the sun prematurely with different songs, different pattern of stars laid out in a blanket across the dark lavender-grey sky. 

His body knows he hurts, but can’t figure out where. There’s no injury to be found, and its panicked nerves and receptors keep searching for where the repair process needs to start. It will keep making him twist and turn in a fevered frenzy if he foolishly attempts sleep. He knows this.

He wears a path around the perimeter of the field, running for almost an hour. He changes direction at some point so that he won’t get one-sided, and he runs until his body is too exhausted, too empty of fuel, to give a fuck about anything but rest. That’s how he falls asleep, after showering off the sweat; emotionally, intellectually, and physically exhausted. 

He stays mostly asleep for four hours, which is good for him, for a bad night. 

When he’s awake again, feeling like he got kicked by a horse, he goes down to the kitchen and makes his tea thick and black enough to look like the noxious poison that it is by the time he’s done letting it steep. He pops one of the three tea bags into his mouth and he sucks on it while waiting for some of the steam to dissipate from the top of his cup. 

Same as every morning he gets dressed in riding clothes, pulls his boots on, and goes to the barn. He gets there five minutes faster than his usual commute time. He goes directly to the washroom because that’s usually where she is, leaning over that fucking washing machine, biting the capped tip of a dry erase marker and letting it push her lower lip down, sticking her beautiful ass out, weight on one leg with the other bent lazily. He might have caught her in that pose more than once when going to grab a saddle pad or a bridle and he might have a thing for it. He may have, by now, developed a full on kink for that pose of hers.

Instead he finds the other one. He doesn’t know her name. The girl with the black bob and supple muscles, washing out water buckets with soap and a scrub brush. He asks, “Where’s your manager?” and gets a confused look. He remembers that despite being high queen bitch of this fucking farm she is _technically not a manager_ and he asks, “Where’s Erna?”

Because he does not have time to fucking wonder where she is today or to devote one more second of thought to what she might say when he finds her. He lost sleep over this. She can at least have the courtesy to tell him what the fuck is wrong with her. 

He gets pointed out toward the back of the barn. “Indoor.”

He finds her with Erwin, watching Eren walk a horse. Erwin tells him to trot the animal away and Eren pulls on the lead rope. Erna hisses, with a shake of her head, “It’s his left hind.”

Erwin pleads with her, “He doesn’t look off to me.”

“Off” means hurt, in the legs, the worst kind of hurt a horse can get and what they get the most often. For such an important appendage, horses hurt their legs an astounding amount. “Off” only means the symptom: limping, either slightly or dramatically will depend on the reason for the limp. It’s hard to spot.You could line four very experienced people up to watch a horse move and each would pick a different leg that they thought the horse was favouring. 

Levi tells them both, “It’s his right.”

She whips her head around and rolls her eyes at him. It makes him hate her a little and he’s happy about it. Eren gets the horse trotting and it starts getting more demonstrative, hitching its left hip, which would make it _look_ like it’s left leg is hurting, but that’s because it’s trying to save the right hoof and put as little weight on it as possible. Kenny drilled this into him when he was a wain, hitting him upside the head every time he got it wrong, and Levi disliked it enough that he quickly learned to never be wrong again, so that he is able to tell them definitively, “It’s thrush or an abscess.”

Erwin nods and says, “I’ll call Mike,” already reaching into his pocket for his phone. 

But Erna crosses her arms and pouts. “Don’t bother him, I can take care of it.”

Erwin starts to answer back, but Levi cuts in to ask her, “Can I talk to you in private?”

Their boss gives him a look, his mouth tightens. A paranoid thought that _he knows_ somehow crosses Levi’s mind, but he tells himself that’s unlikely, just the anxiety, just too much caffeine. But he swears that Erwin gives them both a hard look before walking away.

She acts like she doesn’t notice, and Erna crosses her arms and clucks her tongue. He shakes off his concern over being caught and turns to ask her, hazardously straightforward, “Did I do something wrong?”

She looks as if she has no idea what he is talking about. She’s either suffered a head injury or is an extraordinary actress. “No.”

“Then…?”

“Look,” she says, finally breaking her aloof mask and nervously pushing her long bangs behind her ear, “it was fine. Okay. It was okay. I just don’t want to, like, repeat it.”

“Okay? It was okay?” he says incredulously, knowing that under her high crew neck tee is a bruise that he fucking bit into her skin while he came inside her.

She shrugs. 

She saves him her ire. She’d like to tell him that she is pretty fucking sure she has a urinary tract infection because of his filthy fucking fingers and he can go choke on a dick while she drowns in cranberry juice trying to avoid the necessity of the antibiotics that she cannot afford. 

She doesn’t say any of that. She’s at work. If they were really speaking in private, she would be screaming that and a lot more, but conveniently for him, he’s caught her in a position where she is forced to be halfway nice to him.

Instead she shrugs. And she watches him walk away with that hateful expression on his face as Eren comes back to the entrance of the indoor with the horse. She takes it from him so that she can bring it back to the barn and check its hooves for an abscess. Eren begins to walk away to get back to the other chores and she stops him to tell him. “Hey, Eren, I’m not gonna ride today.”

“... Okay?”

She looks upward, sighs, waits a beat to see if he’ll get it. “Horses still need to be exercised.”

“So I can...?”

“Yeah. Well, ride Sienna, at least, and then we’ll see.”

His eyes light up. They separate and he runs to switch turnout and then get his things. She walks Lyric - a compact, dark-chocolate-bay gelding that likes to run and play in the paddocks and always ends up getting himself hurt - to the wash stall. She runs her hands up and down his legs, squeezing around his coronet band, smoothing over his ankles, but she can’t feel any heat that would come with an infection. She picks each of his hooves up again and again, trying not to notice that he is hesitant to pick up his left rear because he doesn’t want to put weight on his right hoof, which would definitively show Levi to be right, a possibility she doesn’t want to consider right now. After her inspection, Lyric’s frogs seem fine, his soles are sound. She stops after a few minutes of cooing and clucking her tongue with this horse she thought was hurt and deserved her sympathy. She stops, takes a step back, cocks her hip, crosses her arms, and looks him up and down. She asks the horse, “Are you faking?”

She hears snippets of Erwin and Levi talking, getting louder as they near. 

She is immeasurably relieved that Levi seems to be stubborn and bullheaded enough to stick around and ride Erwin’s horses despite… everything. But she wishes that he would make it easier to avoid him, at least for a few weeks, while her pride recovers. He walks in for his saddle, and, on impulse, thinking she is about to prove him wrong and make him feel like an ass, she asks him, “Where do you figure there’s an abscess in this horse?”

Without pausing to look at her or Lyric, he deadpans, “Right hind,” as if it is very boring and obvious, and ridiculous that she needs it pointed out for her, and he picks up his saddle. 

“It’s not there,” she says with certainty, knowing she should stop, but she does not regret roping him into an argument again if only to hear his deep, dark iron voice. She wishes it didn’t have to be attached to such a reprehensible, self-important creep.

After grabbing up a clean saddle pad and throwing a girth and a bridle over his shoulder, Levi rolls his eyes and comes to a stop next to her, giving her some feet of distance, too disgusted with her to breach her personal space. Erwin walks in just as he points, and says with his heavy accent, “Did you not see the swelling in his ankle?”

“The fuck --” she says as finally she does see it. The right hind ankle is maybe half a size bigger than the other three, and she stoops to feel it again, wrapping her right hand around Lyric’s ankle and her left around his hoof. She feels the heat she was looking for before, but lower than she expected, deep inside his hoof, not up in the ankle. The abscess is so new the infection hasn’t even had a chance to rise yet. As she retracts her hands with a disheartened sigh, Levi says, “Do you not put eyes on these horses every day?”

“I--” she puffs defensively, “I have thirty-two horses in this barn and eighteen outside.”

Erwin subtly steps between them and tells her it’s fine. It isn’t fine, though. She fucked up. Lyric’s hurt and she accused him of faking because she wasn’t paying enough attention, and because she’s an impulsive brat, she just gave this smug fuckboy asshole the satisfaction of being right. He turns and walks for the door, to ride one of the thirty-two horses she struggles to keep track of by herself, and he says, “Let me know if you need more help doing your job.”

Erwin puts his big hand on Erna’s shoulder and squeezes, effectively stopping her forward motion to go follow that fucker and smack him. He nods toward Lyric and says, “I’ll call Mike. You go take a walk.”

She tilts her head and her shoulders at opposite angles and huffs at him. “And do what?”

He presses his lips to a thin line. She shrinks a little as he warns, “Don’t know. Cool yourself down, though.”

She snatches her travel mug full of cranberry juice off the washing machine on her way out and walks down the driveway, kicking rocks and muttering to herself.

It is a full on battle between the good and bad in her head pulling her right and left at the bottom of the driveway. To the right is only a quarter mile walk to the nearby bar and to ‘just one drink’ and the familiar, friendly feeling of not giving so many fucks about everything and calming down enough to be sociable and feel like she’s having fun. Left is just grass and trees and hay and more grass and a cool, clear creek. She’s proud for choosing left, but she’s bitter about it, pouting, looking down at her pink Vans, kicking the grass. She follows the ditch along the road and eventually comes to Armin watching Eren ride in the east half of the grass field. 

She startles herself. So lost in being fucking disappointed with herself and angry with Erwin that she never looks up until she hears hooves, when she’s only two meters from Armin and about to walk into him. 

Eren is posting away. He doesn’t notice her until his next lap, and he slows to a walk, looking deflated already because of her resting bitch face. She is quick to say, “I’m not here to watch you. I got banned from the barn. Erwin’s mad again.”

He looks a little confused and she nods at him. “Keep going.”

He isn’t the worst she’s ever seen. He’s in shape at least. His muscles are there. They’re just not holding the right memory. He rides off his knees and his balance is wrong, but not so bad that Sienna can’t correct it for him. Erna flashes a small smile for him and says, “Good. Go get Phin next.” There are three horses quiet and considerate enough for him to exercise. Hopefully that will keep him from bothering her until whenever it is that he and his friends decide to move on. “Keep it short,” she reminds him. She doesn’t want to be managing the horses turnout all by herself so that he can have fun. Although, she thinks, it’s nice to see someone have fun around here for once.

She walks back up the other side of the driveway and goes back to her work. 

Later, when she’s done and rested and the weather’s taken a turn that she likes, she opens the windows of her bedroom, breathes in the sweet fresh air carrying the smell of grass at the perfect temperature. There’s enough humidity to drink the atmosphere, but it’s cool enough that she doesn’t mind the frizzy hair it gives her. 

She likes her bedroom on the first floor. Closer to the earth. She’s tried out the other two bedrooms when no one’s been in them. She didn’t get the appeal. The air is higher and doesn’t carry as many earth smells aside from the trash in the kitchen and dishes in the sink, if that counts. 

The con is that everyone is above her. More specifically, Armin and Eren are above her right now. They took the bedroom directly over hers and Mikasa took the other one that faces the barn. 

She leans her elbows on her dresser and puts her face close to the open window. The springy weather makes her feel irrationally optimistic. Then something taps at her other window that faces the porch and startles the shit out of her. She goes straight for the rifle over her bed rather than the door, but suddenly she hears Erwin’s voice say her name from outside. 

She stops, leaves the rifle, exits her bedroom door, and then opens the front door of the house, to tell him, “You scared the shit out of me.”

He looks surprised, as if he doesn’t know how paranoid and anxious she is. He says, “I’m sorry?”

“I could have shot you.”

“I didn’t teach you to shoot and give you that rifle so that you could stick it out open windows like you’re in an old western movie.”

He’s right and she knows it immediately. She would get defensive and argue with him just for the fun of it, only she sees a pack of cigarettes in his front pocket and she knows what they’re there for. This has happened a few times before. The cigarettes mean that she is in trouble. That she is going to sit and listen while he smokes the first one because she has stressed him out so much that he needs one, and then she can keep the rest. It kind of softens the blow of the fact that she is in enough trouble so that he’s come to scold her even though she’s supposed to be a grown-ass adult. She can just never bring herself to act like one. Not completely.

He taps the pack on the heel of his palm a few times, then gives her one and lights it for her. She’s reminded of cowboy movie imagery again. Don’t you get a cigarette before they hang you?

She is, in no uncertain terms, never to fight with Levi again. Erwin says that he does not care why it’s happening or what needs to happen to make it stop. He isn’t wrong. She’s being selfish, she knows that. She promises him that she can leave it alone. 

She goes back to her room smelling like smoke and she sticks the cigarettes on her dresser and goes to wash her hands and face. She looks at herself in the mirror and doesn’t know what the fuck is wrong with the person staring inquisitively back at her. 

She has a thing for sex mixed with violence, and thus has a thing for the wrong kinds of men. The strategy she's developed over time, for avoiding the obvious trouble that would result from this, is to simply avoid men in general if she can. She knows she does not ‘relationship’ well. Her last three “relationships” have ended in spectacular blow-outs because she has a talent for the wrong kind of behavior. She has an itch for it, a voice somewhere in there that tells her to do the wrong thing at the right time to the men she’s attracted to. 

An argument punctuated by a dirty quickie is not exactly new to her. 

She’d already resolved herself to stay away from Levi anyway, without any urging from Erwin. She just doesn’t know why it’s so fucking hard to do. Well, she does. It’s because he’s handsome and he smells nice and he fucked her like he hates her. That’s exactly her type. And now he’s acting like he’s entitled to more, even though he wasn’t that good, and that’s why she’s having very conflicted feelings about the whole staying away from him thing. She doesn’t want to stay away from him. She just wants him to stop being so stubborn and arrogant and wrong about everything.

  


The next day she is minding her own fucking business at 7am when Levi walks in wearing white breeches. Why are they always so fucking white? And a fitted navy blue tee that looks so soft, more casual than his usual classic polo shirt, and she doesn’t care. Could not possibly care less about how he looks in his Cavallo field boots. She is absolutely not thinking about how a pair of them costs up to five hundred dollars and god they look worth every cent on his calves. She would fucking lick them if he told her to.

All of this is going on in the periphery of her vision and her brain while she leans over the washing machine and looks at the list Erwin just handed her like he does every morning. Five horses to exercise, and two with asterisks that mean it would be nice if she could find the time to exercise them, but if not then it’s fine. Erwin is always trying to get that extra little bit of energy out of her and take advantage of her dedication to work. Sometimes it works, when her guilt and love of self punishment come creeping up, and sometimes it doesn’t work, when she’s dirty and bone-tired and weary of being taken advantage of. 

“Tch.”

Levi clucks his tongue and Erna turns her face to watch and find out what he has a problem with now. He’s looking at some coggins certificates. He tells Erwin, who’s waiting for Erna’s verdict on whether those two extra horses can be ridden today, that, “None of these names match anything in this barn.”

She wonders if he expects them all to go by their long-ass ridiculous registered names. She tells Erwin, “I can have Mikasa lunge the last two.”

“Does she know how?” He asks, while moving over to Levi, to see what he’s looking at on the yellow carbon copy paper he’s holding.

Erna says that she doesn’t, but it’s not a difficult skill to teach. And she trusts Mikasa to do it more than Eren who actually has previous experience. But Erwin isn’t even listening. He’s following Levi, and she feels a raw sort of irritation, almost like jealousy. She stomps her way to the feed room across the aisle of the barn and hears Levi ask, “Which one is Dawn Song Adelphi?”

She knows that Erwin probably doesn’t know. She is simply going to be helpful when she says, “That’s Odin.”

“Can’t be,” he says so quickly, as if he would fucking know, not like she’s been the one feeding, grooming, and exercising the horse for five years. 

“Why not?” She asks, incredulous as to how he can seem to feel so sure.

He taps the coggins certificate and shakes it. “Says it’s a mare.”

“Yeah,” she points at the bay, 16.3hh thoroughbred mare across the aisle and a few stalls down, and says, “Odin. She’s got a lightning streak on her forehead.”

“Odin’s not a girl’s name.”

“Who says?”

Now he turns fully around to look at her, giving her the most disgusted, disbelieving expression. “He’s a Norse _god_.”

She crosses her arms, tilts her head, and lowers her eyelids. She drawls with slow confidence lowering her tone and tempo, “Well then it isn’t a human name at all and can’t be gendered.”

Mike’s truck pulls up outside, early so that he can lance and drain Lyric’s abscess before going off to his other jobs. He sets a paper bag with a bagel and coffee for Erna on the washing machine in the washroom and looks around. He’d expected the horse to already be set up for him, as is usual when Erwin knows he’s coming.

He isn’t a difficult person to work with, but he isn’t lax about being on time, and he appreciates if people have their horses ready to be worked on when he arrives. Even on his boyfriend’s farm, he’s got to value his time. So he thinks he’s about to go out and scold Erna for neglecting her job, but instead he walks into the middle of a screaming match in the aisle over genders and norse mythology and whether a mare knows whether it’s a mare or a god. 

Erwin puts his hand on Levi’s arm and tries to very gently steer him away, which does calm him, which is good, because if he shouts at Erna again, he’s going to get decked. Mike looks down at her tight little fists. 

Levi, over his shoulder, delivers a verbal parting shot. “Odin wasn’t even the god of lightnin’, you absolute wagon.”

Mike isn’t sure what that means, but he knows fightin’ words. So does Erna, who is almost too fast for him to grab. She flies toward Levi, Mike crouches and his arms go around her middle, and he picks her up off her feet and carries her backwards, toward the barn doors while she kicks and screams. As he backs away, he asks Eren, who has been standing in the corridor to the feed room watching, terrified, “Could you put Lyric on the cross-ties for me?”

Stunned, the boy nods. Erna claws at Mike’s forearms when she realizes that he’s pulling her out of the barn and her window of chance to rip Levi’s face clean off his skull is closing. She shrieks, just to have the last word, “Your views on gender are as limited as your riding ability!”

Mike places her into the back of his work truck and closes the door. She immediately stands very still, facing the heavy metal door, counts to five in her head, takes a deep breath, and says carefully, “Okay, I’m calm now.”

“Uh-huh,” Mike says sarcastically, not buying it. 

“Oh come on!” She shouts in a rage, punches the steel door, and hurts her hand, wincing and hissing to herself as she shakes the pain out of her fingers.

He warns her, “Don't think I won't take you to the next farm with me. You’re not getting out of there until you can relax.”

Erna sits down, childishly and dramatically crumpling to the metal floor of the farrier’s truck, and she mutters, “Wish you would.”

Eren coaxes Lyric to turn on his bad side and get clipped to the cross-ties that will hold him in place. Erwin follows the horse in, meets Mike who’s just buckling his leather farrier apron around his waist, and says, “This is your fault.”

Mike doesn’t react at all. Erwin realizes too late that Eren is still right there and he gives the boy a look that gets him scurrying out to the barn to look busy. 

“It’s no one’s fault. Sometimes personalities clash.”

“Uh huh. ‘Sometimes personalities clash’,” Erwin echoes in a stage whispered hiss. “Don’t act like you didn’t see the hickey on her neck.” 

He had actually missed it, but isn’t shocked, and responds with a chuckle that his boyfriend obviously thinks is inappropriate. Mike assures him, “It’ll all work out.”

Erna bangs on the door of the truck five times in an even rhythm and without screaming. Erwin gives Mike a look, rolls his eyes, and goes to let her out. Now Mike spots the bruise peeking out from under her t-shirt’s neckline while Erwin tells her to stay in the washroom until Levi goes out to ride. She tells him it’s going to take her forever to finish work that way. He snaps back that he doesn’t care. On his way out he grabs Eren by the shoulder and makes sure to tell him to stay glued to Levi so that he will not need to get anything from the washroom or to be anywhere near Erna for any reason.

She shouts after him, “This is ridiculous.”

Erwin answers back bitterly, “I agree. It is.”

Mike watches Erna frown and lift herself onto the washing machine to sit and drink the coffee he brought her. He smirks. “Seems like you’ve got it bad.”

“The fuck did you just say to me?” she asks aggressively.

“Nothing.”

She creases her brows and pouts into her coffee cup, “He’s the fucking worst. They’re both the fucking worst. Can fucking have each other. Fucking golden boy. Can’t even ride that well. I’m fine. I’m fucking perfect.”

“Uh-huh.”

Mike leans to lift Lyric’s leg and Erna jumps off the washing machine, goes, “Wait, I wanted Armin to watch this!” and runs for the little corridor into the aisle of the barn. Levi happens to be passing with Odin tacked up to ride at the same moment. He mutters, “Cunt,” at her, and she calls him a talentless piece of shit. All in passing. Quiet enough that Erwin won’t hear. Words buzzing with electricity. 

Mike is freshly annoyed when she comes back with Armin, because that’s one more minute he’s been kept waiting and it’s already looking like he might be late to his next job. She couldn’t care less about the irritated expression on his face. He’s the best farrier in the state - maybe in the country - according to her, and he can keep people waiting. 

She watches him and Armin from her washing machine perch while Mike moves as slowly as he can stand to, actually putting the horse’s hoof up to rest on the hoof jack and showing the rapt teenager what to look for. He has to think about what he’s doing for the first time in decades, rather than just quickly resting the hoof on his knee, poking at it a few times, and cutting a hole to drain it in seconds.

He lets Armin hold the tools and shows him how to best take a horse’s hoof between your legs so that it can’t kick you. Erna watches until she’s finished eating half of her bagel and then she gets back to work with a flounce off of the washing machine and out the door. 

Eren, taking advantage of her being out of the barn, sneaks into the washroom and changes the station on the radio. Erna won’t let him wear headphones during work for a few different reasons, all of which she described in great detail for him, helpfully detailing many of the injuries that could result from him not being able to hear what’s going on around him or by simply getting the cord of his earbuds wrapped around his neck, vividly describing for him what _actually_ happens when a person is decapitated.

As enforced by one of the three sacred, barn rules, Erna always keeps the radio set to the local National Public Radio station that plays a lot of news and arts and culture and politics and only sometimes plays some music on weekends, but it’s horrible music. Eren clearly just wants to listen to the top 40 station like a normal person. 

Mike can sympathize. When Erna had first imposed her will on the radio in the barn, four and a half years ago, he’d missed the music right away. Music is always playing in a horse barn, from a radio that is dirty and decrepit and would otherwise be in the trash, and he didn’t realize he was accustomed to it until he stopped hearing it while he worked. At the start, he’d tried a few times to change the station when he was there working and she’d whipped around the corner of the barn so fast, swirling inside that door and smacking the preset button before whirling back out without a word. She shot him down that way five or six times and he gave up on it - he began to like learning something once in a while. 

She says the boring talk radio station calms the horses. That’s her excuse. He thinks it’s only to calm her, though he’d never say that to her face. Erwin, when Mike mentioned it early on, said that he thinks it’s something about the frenetic music stations being too abrupt and too loud and jarring to the sensitive, hyper-alert girl. Mike, on the other hand, thinks it’s a little silly to think that any woman who shouts ‘Fuck,’ with such volume and frequency would be afraid of a little noise. 

Mike has never told Erwin, but he connected the love for informative radio shows to the fact that Erna never finished school long ago, after she confided in him about it. She’s told Mike a lot on slow, quiet mornings, like that she quit riding when she was fourteen, and by seventeen was given an ultimatum that if she didn’t get her shit together and apply to colleges, then she couldn’t live at home, acting like that suited her fine, when Mike is sure it was a lot less neat and clean and unemotional than she lets on. She might not have revealed the devastating bit of her backstory to him like he knows she did Erwin, but she seems to deem him safer to reveal many, small, personal things to. He thinks it’s because he leaves. She sees him for an hour or two every two weeks. Almost like one would a therapist. 

Her preference isn’t solely for quiet, like Erwin thinks, it’s so that she can actually listen and learn while she’s working, and Mike thinks it’s too earnest to be purely for the sake of it. It seems important to her to always be right, and to never speak without knowing what she’s talking about. Listening to educational things is purely about her intellectual insecurity, but Mike keeps that to himself. Erwin doesn't always need to know everything, and is probably better off not knowing, honestly. 

Eren sings and dances along to a Taylor Swift song until Erna is only steps away from the door and then he slams the first preset button. Famous public radio host Marty Moss-Coane’s steady voice returns in the middle of an interview with an economist promoting a new book. Eren stops dancing, Erna walks in, tilts her head, gives all of them a squinty, suspicious look, goes to the whiteboard to mark a horse’s turnout finished, and turns on her heel going right back outside. Mike snickers a little when Eren changes the station back to pop music. He doesn’t mind the mischief as long as it doesn't disturb his work. He shows Armin how to scoop the knife along the hoof to open up the abscess and let the infected pus drain out. He explains which part of the hoof is okay to cut away and how to know when you're too close to the soft cushion underneath.

The loud thunder of shod hooves on cement echoes in the aisle as Levi walks Odin back into the barn, dragging her behind him into the washroom, straight to the bridle rack. Holding the end of the reins by hooking them in his elbow, he reaches for a particular bit. Erwin calls something after him from outside and he answers back, “One moment.” Behind his back, Odin stretches her neck out to sniff at Lyric who’s facing her on the cross-ties while Mike shows Armin how to find the abscess in his hoof. He knickers at her softly and perks his ears forward. Call Me Maybe plays on the radio. 

Erna comes in again just as Odin is pinning her ears straight back and flaring her nostrils. She notices the music and growls at Eren to change it back with her canines bared. That gets Levi’s attention away from the bridle rack, and while he’s watching her, Odin makes an ear-splitting, high-pitched squeal, communicating that she is highly offended by the horse across from her. Lyric balks and tries to back away from her, kicks the hoof jack with a loud metal clatter, and nearly knocks Armin to the floor. Erna shouts, “Pay the fuck attention!” at Levi for making the careless mistake of letting the horses get too close to each other in the first place.

Erwin fills the doorway and booms, “Erna!”

“What!?” she shouts right back, because she will not be chastised when she is right.

Levi yanks on Odin’s reins and makes her back four steps. She lifts her head high in the air indignantly as the bit jerks at the corners of her mouth. 

Erwin tells Erna with crushing gravity, “You’re about to get your pay docked.”

“That’s--” She shuts her mouth abruptly. The stern lines in his face make her think better. The single digits in her checking account make her think better.

Levi deadpans at Erwin, “It’s nothing.”

Eren switches Call Me Maybe for the boring, dry, academic talk of the public radio station. Erwin walks out and Mike knows it’s because he hates conflict. He hates to be around it and that’s the cost to keeping Erna around. Conflict everywhere all the time. Occasional tempests. Fickle tsunamis of emotion and anger at unpredictable times with unpredictable outcomes. 

He’s been telling Erwin it’ll get better with age and maturity for five years running.

He gives Lyric a heavy, solid rub along his neck and a scratch behind the ears to calm him down, then goes back to showing Armin how to hold the hoof tester, which looks like an oversized clamp. He has to actually make an effort to remember how to teach the technique that has become second nature to him. He’s terrible at teaching anyone who can’t learn just from watching. This is why he never takes apprentices. He can never remember the words and the breakdown of what he does. He just does. 

He just knows where the abscess is. It’s invisible, but he knows. He can’t teach the eager-to-learn student how to do that. No one really taught him. He picked it up so long ago that it’s an innate skill now.

Levi clips Odin’s bridle to a single cross-tie to hold her still while he looks at the bridle rack again. He picks one, clucks his tongue at it, takes it off its hook and starts removing the figure-8 noseband to attach it to a different bridle. While he unbuckles and removes the piece of leather, he goes over to the radio and turns it back to the station Eren had it on. It starts playing the chorus of a loud, fast song and Erna winces at the volume. 

She says, “I was listening to that,” because, unlike with Eren, she can’t just demand that Levi change it back with a flash of her teeth. He ignores her completely and keeps assembling his bridle, quickly unfastening the bit from the cheekpieces and replacing it with the new one.

Armin finds the abscess with the hoof tester and Mike moves on to showing him how to find the edges of it, his big hands dwarfing the kid’s pale, delicate ones and guiding him to not put too much pressure on the tender part of the hoof. Erna sits and waits, the tension of her anger palpable, and when Levi turns back toward Odin, she hops off of the washing machine, violently chewing her bagel, and changes the station back. She doesn’t see the look that Levi turns and gives her, because she’s already flouncing back to her perch, spinning herself to sit up on the washing machine again, but Mike sees it, and he doesn’t like it. 

He glances down at Armin’s hands, makes sure he’s in the right position, should anything happen, and that he’s unlikely to get kicked. Putting a hand on his shoulder, he moves behind him and out of the way. 

He moves slowly, unassumingly, something he has gotten good at out of necessity, because he is a very large man and can be quite off-putting if he isn’t careful with his body language and movement. His default is intimidating, without even trying. He’s spent most of his life trying to be less intimidating. 

Levi, without stopping in his bridle assemblage, hands sliding the noseband through the browband and buckling it with practiced fingers without needing to look down at what he’s doing, goes back over to the radio and tunes it to blare pop music that Mike doubts he even wants to be listening to. He sees what’s going on here. It’s not like it’s subtle. 

As Levi’s turning back to Odin again, holding the bridle up to her face, eyeing if it will fit, Mike presses the first preset button on the ancient boombox sitting atop some plastic shelving piled with mountains of saddle pads. The music is cut off and interrupted by a break for a public radio host to ask for pledges. When Levi comes to stand before him, Mike crosses his arms and looks down at him. 

“Move.”

He has to laugh. Not loud. Just a derisive breath through his nose. With a condescending smirk to follow, Mike says, simply, “No.” 

He’d love to see this leprechaun do something about it. He’d love to see Erwin try to threaten _him_ with docked pay. In the corner of his eye, he catches Erna smile and pull her legs up onto the top of the washing machine with her, hugging her knees with one arm as she picks up her coffee to sip and watch closely.

Levi tries to command him with a low growl to change the station back. Mike says calmly, as if this man’s anger is of little consequence, “Won’t do that.” He grabs up a roll of duct tape behind him that Erna leaves around to help shore up the antenna on the boombox when it’s getting staticky, and he rips off a big strip. He turns and slaps it over the dial for the tuner, rips off another with his teeth, and covers the dial completely with it. He turns back around, holding the roll of duct tape up, and he informs the man glaring at him, “If you keep giving this girl a hard time, you’re going to have a hard time with me, and I don’t think you want that.”

With a click of his tongue, Levi storms off, taking Odin with him, yanking on her reins and dragging her out to be ridden, cursing at her the whole way. Erna says with shy, sardonic irony into her cardboard cup of coffee, “Thanks, Dad.”

He tells her with his own brand of sunny sarcasm, “By the way, Odin is a beautiful and fitting name for a mare.”

“ _I_ thought so.”

When he comes back around behind Lyric, Armin has already cut out part of the hoof to drain the abscess. Mike looks down bewildered, checking his work, which is quite good for someone who has literally never done this. The boy asks him, “Sorry, is that okay?”

“That’s great,” he shakes his head. “You trying to apprentice?”

“Veterinary student,” he says as he goes to the medicine cabinet for gauze and iodide. He’s learned to use those two words anytime his presence or existence here is questioned. Those two words explain everything.

Erna asks from over on her perch, “Did he do it?”

“All done,” Mike shrugs. “You going to do the next one?”

She shrinks back, hunching her shoulders a little. He’s been trying to teach her for three years, but she’ll do everything up to the actual cutting. She’s too afraid of making a mistake. 

He picks up the hoof jack, gives Lyric a pat on the neck, grabs the shoeing box, and puts everything in the truck while Armin dresses the open hole in his hoof. After slamming the back of the truck door closed, he steps back inside, slips Erna a twenty, says it’s a tip when she sees it and tries to shove it back at him, and tells her to fill Erwin’s truck with gas if nothing else. He’s in a rush now. 

He stops at the end of the driveway. Erwin, across the road watching his new rider warm up, turns around at the sound of the truck and walks over. 

Mike rolls down the window. “Dinner tonight?”

He smirks. “I might take you up on that.”

“You alright?”

His answer is only a tightening of his lips. 

Mike asks, “You mad at me?”

He won’t admit it, but he does feel a little at fault for having the idea that Erna and Levi would get along. He was clearly dead wrong and is more than ready to admit that now. He’d only had an idea that perhaps their girl has mellowed out some by now and that a competent man who knows horses and is established in his career would be good for her, but he’s reminded now that he doesn't know about straight people. They’re a fucking mess. He’ll never understand them.

“Not so bad you can’t make it up to me,” Erwin promises with a wink of one of those beautiful bright blue eyes, and makes Mike feel very, very lucky. 

Erwin waves as he lets Mike get to his next job and goes back over to the grass field where Levi tells him, “All of your horses are hard in the mouth,” with hostile impatience, then he purses his lips, creases his brow and shakes his head. “No, that’s not the right term. What is it?”

“Maybe you’re being heavy in your hands,” Erwin suggests as gently and calmly as he can, but honestly, he’s getting just as fed up with him as he is Erna. 

“They fly up at the slightest touch to their mouths. They’re ill-tempered,” he harmonizes low and slow.

Erwin wonders if they’re still talking about the horse. 

“Who the fuck trained them?”

Erwin can tell he’s only asking because he wants to complain, so he says, “Erna,” and lets him go on a tirade over her. He waits. He listens to him grouse about how she’s too gentle with the horses while being impossible at dealing with people and generally terrible at everything in every way. When he seems out of breath and out of things to complain about, Erwin asks, “You feel better?”

Levi finally looks down and actually makes eye contact with him, as if he was so absorbed in his thoughts he’d forgotten he was there. He blinks, takes a deep breath, and says, “Yes, actually.”

“Good,” he says, his voice free of approval. “Maybe you could do some riding now?”

“Fuck.” He shortens his reins. “I’m sorry. She gets me all riled up like.”

“You’ll be away from each other in a few weeks,” he reminds him. Then they’ll be at “Horse Shows in the Sun” or HITS in upstate New York, where they’ll be for sixteen days, without Erna. 

“Can’t come soon enough.”

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i thought about doing a glossary for this one, but it would have been very long. also, google, is just, out there, like, existing.  
> sorry i have trouble sticking to my self-imposed posting schedule. sometimes i get excited about this thing i have wrought and can't wait to post it.


	9. chapter twelve

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> un-proofread. also short.

Fine coffee grounds swirl like a galaxy on top of the water in the french press on the counter. Erna stands over them, looking down, breathing in steam and stirring them to steep with a leftover set of chopsticks from chinese takeout the night before. Mikasa sits at the yellow-table-clothed kitchen table, looking out the window at the foals playing and running around their feed buckets. They always get fed last and start clamoring for food first. She checks the time on her phone again. Erna would guess it’s only two minutes until seven, but she’s gonna soak up those two minutes of peace for all they’re worth.

Eren chirps, “Your bruise is almost gone.”

“Yeah,” she says quietly, fitting the top of the french press on and pushing the screen down. “Good.”

Bruises are easy to explain away on a farm. You don’t even need a reason to explain them away. They happen so often as to be unremarkable. She’s always got at least one somewhere on her body, usually in her thigh region, usually from walking right into a wheelbarrow or a saddle rack or anything in her way and not at eye level. 

A hickey is still a hickey and the “bruise” he is referring to has been pretty obvious at the juncture of her neck and shoulder for a few days. She’s been keeping it covered with a thick-strapped racerback sports bra every morning so that Erwin won’t catch on. He doesn’t miss details and would know right away where that hickey came from, because he is anything but the idiot that she constantly tells him he is. She thinks Eren is giving her the benefit of the doubt or he is executing some high quality, dry, unbelievably subtle sarcasm on her. 

She turns and looks over her shoulder at him, re-buttoning his orange, brown & cream plaid shirt because he was off by one button on his first attempt, and she thinks it’s the former.

Armin, on the other hand, pouring himself a cup of coffee from the drip coffee maker that Erna despises - asks her innocently, “What’d you get it from?”

But when she looks over at him, he’s got her locked in his eyes to see her reaction, because he’s a smart, devious little shit and she’s learning to not treat him like the innocent kid she thought he was. Dating Annie has made him worse, she thinks. She’s rubbing off on him, so she lowers her eyelids and tells him as bluntly as she can, “Someone’s mouth,” just like she would if he were Annie.

He is subtly, but visibly disappointed that she didn’t dance to come up with a denial or an excuse. Meanwhile, Eren’s eyes widen and he goes, “Really?”

Mikasa, who’s apparently been listening while looking out the window finally turns her head, lifts her hands, and goes, “What did you  _ honestly _ think it was Eren?” in complete disbelief at his obliviousness.

Erna tries to keep the corners of her lips from rising too far. She hates smiling in front of people. She turns to the counter again and pours the coffee from the french press into her stainless steel travel mug, blowing the steam away to take one sip and then press the lid on. She only sits down to drink a cup of coffee on her days off. Otherwise it’s one sip, one gulp, here and there, in between tasks, usually gone cold by mid-morning when she might actually have a second to enjoy it. 

Mikasa gets up from the table and goes for the stairs, meaning it’s seven and time to start work, which she is eager to do. Mikasa has been finishing cleaning the stalls so fast that she’s been sitting on her hands more and more no matter how much hard labor Erna gives her to do, so Erna gave her a new chore, something that doesn’t require much knowledge about horses: playing with and handling the foals. Erna always means to do it, but it’s at the bottom of her list of priorities and she’s lucky if she finds time to do anything with them more than once a month. She’d be eager to follow Mikasa and run down the stairs and outside, too, if she got to play with some baby horses for an hour, instead of devoting all her mental energy to keeping the fifty horse farm organized and all her physical energy to getting horses exercised, groomed, and fed every day. She cringes in a sudden, momentary depression that she feels sometimes when she realizes she’s surrounded by the thing she loves everyday and doesn’t even get to enjoy it.

They head in different directions when they get out from the long, straight, thin path of grass between the paddocks. Mikasa goes to get her pitchfork and wheelbarrow to start cleaning stalls, Armin goes to the feed room to measure out grain for lunch, Eren goes into the main aisle of the barn to start feeding breakfast, and Erna starts hanging the saddle pads in the washing machine from yesterday to dry on the line outside. 

Levi insists lately on a clean saddle pad for each horse, and she isn’t sure he isn’t doing it only to make her life a little harder, to make her do three loads of laundry and hang up eight or nine pads instead of two or three. 

She heard him ask Erwin yesterday whether the jumps could all be repainted if he put up the money for the paint, and she’s pretty sure that he knows perfectly well who’s going to end up standing in the driveway in the blazing sun with a paintbrush. Erwin doesn’t even know why she’s angry about it. She’s been asking him to let her repaint those jumps for years. That’s not the point.

It’s not like she can tell him that his new favorite rider is making her life hell because she let him fuck her on a dirty pile of horse blankets and she’s been having a lot of trouble respecting herself or him ever since. 

There’s still another pile of laundry sitting on the damp floor of the washroom, because he needs things like fleece girth covers and insists on polo wraps when he rides, and she is confident that he’s only been doing it to give her a hard time, but she’s promised Erwin that she’ll never raise her voice at him again, so… She acts like she does not notice and it seems to be a much better expression of spite than anything else. He seems to hate it even more than when she was screaming at him daily. Her favorite new activity is ghosting him directly to his face and watching him look like he will die mad about it. 

She goes back inside to find the running washing machine is leaking out a quickly growing puddle of soapy water onto the floor of the washroom for the fourth time this month. When she turns quick on her heel and steps back out onto the gravel pad parking lot separating her from her new target, Levi’s car is pulling up. Not the blue one she got to drive for a day, but something much more sensible and black. He, as always, seems to unfold his compact, dense and firmly muscled body from the drivers side as she’s going by so that she can ignore him as he says “Morning,” to her. 

She never slows in her quick march to the house. “Erwin, you cheap fuck, that piece of shit washer is broken again!”

Levi frowns and slams the car door as he seems to every morning without fail. Eren comes trotting out of the barn with a smile on his face to fetch his saddle and helmet. Levi tosses him the latter and never lets him touch the first. His saddle has survived horses flipping over on top of him, but he isn’t sure it would survive Eren. 

Erna’s crescendo rises to a fever pitch when Erwin opens the door to the house, desperate in her frustration. “I’m fucking sick of this! You could go pick something out of the goddamn junkyard and it would be better than that!”

With only the barest hint of a smile as they’re walking to the barn, Levi tells Eren, “I want polo wraps on all of the horses I ride today.” He stops at Vex’s stall near the front of the barn. She isn’t on his list for today, but he’s been thinking about her as a project. She’s got the best breeding here and he doesn’t know why she hasn’t been in any competitions when she’s already ten years old. He watches her for a moment while she munches placidly at her morning grain, and tells Eren, “Going to take her out and see how high she can go.”

He lets the teenager scurry to get her ready while he fucks off, because it annoys that little bitch outside when she goes to order Eren around and he’s already busy. Then, he goes directly to the washroom to change the station on the radio because like fuck he’s afraid of that big-ass white-knight farrier as if he’ll appear out of nowhere. He steps over a puddle of soapy water and changes the radio to a random station that plays loud, blaring music while Eren brings Vex into the washroom. 

Levi stands there and takes a sip of his tea. “You could do that in her stall, yaknow.”

“Oh, yeah, but this is easier.”

He rolls his eyes, and then his neck, cracking it right and left. His shoulders have been feeling like shit after over a week of hauling on the mouths of these strong-muscled, strong-willed horses. As he’s thinking he needs a fucking chiropractor he hears the harpy's voice approaching, complaining, “It’s twenty years old, and even when it was new, it wouldn’t have been able to go through four loads of saddle pads a day.”

He turns toward her voice and they share a glance, her clear-cut crystal eyes finding his as she walks in from outside. She winces at the accidental acknowledgment, quickly gathers herself and goes back to acting like he doesn’t exist.

His brows knit above the rim of his cardboard cup of tea. He had a shitty night of sleep and decided at the last second on his drive over that more caffeine was necessary, but now he regrets the steam in his face and the hot liquid running down his throat as the sun gets higher in the sky. 

“How fucking hot is it going to get?” He mutters, not expecting any answer.

Eren eager to be helpful, says, “The high’s gonna be eighty-five.”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

“Siri,” Erna’s voice rings from over by the sink where she’s attempting to rinse a soapy, half-washed saddle pad without getting water absolutely everywhere, and Levi tilts his head, flashing her a sardonic smirk that she pretends not to see, because he turned his fucking Siri function off after the first and last time she pulled this shit with him.

But Eren’s pocket pings and she asks his iPhone to convert eighty fahrenheit to celsius. Apparently she can listen, and she can talk to him via Siri by proxy, but she won’t fucking get off her pedestal to deign to talk to him after using him for a quick fuck. Grand. 

His eyes slide down her body, half-soaked in water from being careless with the hose while watering horses, and he feels a pang of jealousy because it’s hot as fuck out and he could stand to be soaked in cold water himself, though obviously he should be more worried about calming his fucking dick down while he watches drops of water slide down the outline of her abs to settle into the waistband of the navy blue sweatpants she’s wearing with the letters of some community college on the thigh in white. The hems are disintegrated and the elastic is loose enough that they look like they’ll fall off her exposed hip bones if she moves too suddenly. 

Words unbidden tumble from his lips as he asks her the first direct question he’s tried in a week. “Are you going to ride like that?” because it’s ridiculous enough that she rides in shorts and a pair of half chaps every day as if putting on a pair of actual riding breeches or field boots would be too much effort for someone as aloof as herself. 

She keeps her expression blank and tries to ignore him as per usual, but as his luck would have it, the great arbiter walks in, phone held to his ear, half listening to them while on hold for something, and he tells her, “Erna, you can’t ignore him if he asks you a question, it’s rude,” weary and tired of both of them. 

“Well, I can’t answer his question without _ being _ rude,” she says, as if he isn’t standing right there. “May as well save my energy and keep my mouth shut,” she mutters.

Erwin’s hand covers his face as he rubs at the corners of his brow and then slides his palm down to his chin like he does when he’s at a loss. 

Levi thinks about taking her behind the barn, bending her over his knee, and spanking the rudeness out of her like the fucking brat she is… Like he should have done a week ago before he fucked her and made her think she had something over him. 

He asks Erwin an inconsequential question that he does not care about the answer to so that he can stand there with plausible deniability and stay near enough to make her visibly uncomfortable while the man answers him. She attempts to wring out the saddle pad she was rinsing over the sink, gets more water on her white, thin-as-a-dishrag tank top, and as she’s standing up straight, shaking dripping water from her forearms with a scrunched little nose like she hates being wet, she turns to look the mare on the cross-ties up and down and mumble as if to no one, “Gonna want to put a running martingale on her.” On her way out to the main aisle of the barn, she says, more loudly, “And if you’re trying to take her to Devon, Erwin, you’re gonna want to put her on some kind of mood adjuster starting yesterday.”

Erwin hums absently. Levi looks over at Vex, standing still, placid but curious and interested, and says to himself, “The fuck is she on about?”

He thinks Erna is confusing size for clunkiness or obstinance. Big horses turn hard. They need a little more care in being set up for the fence. It doesn’t make them more dangerous than the small ones. He’s had his ass handed to him by more ponies than big fucking grand prix horses. He tells Erwin, “Don’t bother with her mood, she’s fine.” 

Erwin finally gets whoever he was waiting for on the phone and walks back outside the cement block barn for better reception. Levi, alone for the moment, goes over to Vex and pats her velvet nose. He’s ridden everything in the barn twice. Nothing screams potential at him, not that they aren’t good, fast horses, just when you meet the right one it’s usually like an epiphany. Doesn’t always make sense, but it hits you when you’re on a horse that’s going to take you far. 

Vex’s lineage is that of a seasoned, champion show jumper. When Erwin comes back inside, finished with the phone call, Levi asks him, “Why hasn’t anyone taken her out?”

“Oh, Vex?” Erwin blinks, then his squeeze into a tense expression. “Don’t think anyone’s strong enough for her, honestly.”

“Anyone tried?”

“Connor Kean rode her in a low jumper class at Devon one year.”

“How’d that go?” Levi asks, though he thinks he can guess how it went. They’re both from northern Ireland and he’s ridden with the man more than a few times. 

“Well that was a few years ago,” Erwin defends his horse. “She was less mature.”

Erna comes in at her brisk walk, reaching for a lead rope, she says, “Connor Kean can’t ride for shit.”

Automatically, as he often does, Erwin tells her quickly, “Watch your mouth.”

“She’s not wrong,” Levi tells Vex, tickling her nose before giving her a rub on her forehead for which she nods gratefully. 

“Well he spends half the year at the same shows as us, so if you both could tone it down,” Erwin says loudly as Erna walks back out to the barn and Levi unclips Vex from the crossties. He offers her the bit of her bridle and Eren comes jogging back in.

Without turning to look at him, Levi says, “That’s a german martingale.”

Eren looks at the piece of leather equipment in his hands. “It is?”

“Running martingale has the O-rings,” he deadpans, attempting to hide his irritation. After Eren leaves to find the right piece of tack, Levi turns to Erwin and asks, “Could you get that kid a fucking book or something?”

“I’ll take care of it.”

He finishes buckling all the pieces of Vex’s bridle and remembers to tell him, “I have friends coming to stay with me for two weeks. They might be in your hair. Ignore them.”

“They’re welcome here,” Erwin says absently while he checks on Erna’s notes on a grain order, his brows pinching at its center. 

“You won’t say that when you’ve met them.”

“Huh?”

“Nothing.”

He takes Vex out to the front of the barn where Eren meets him with a running martingale that will fit her and starts to put it over her head. Erna walks in from outside, in a rush, in between chores, but she stops dead in her tracks suddenly, changes course to go over to Vex’s stall and grab her ear cover off her door, comes back and tosses it at Eren who sees it too late and fumbles the catch.

She never stops moving, walking off to wherever she was going. Ten more feet away she stops again, turns back, and says, “She’s clunky and doesn’t have any confidence yet. She needs a few more years to get her head and her legs under her.”

Levi presumes she’s finally talking to him. Good enough to fuck in a dirty hayloft, but not to grace with a word unless she thinks he’s about to fuck up a horse’s training. 

“Feck off.” He touches Vex’s reins and she follows him with a gentle nudge of her nose against his shoulder. 

Eren tags along close behind and asks his idol, “What does that mean? When you say get their legs under them?”

“Doesn’t mean anything,” he lilts. “Horse people spout off a lot of shit that doesn’t mean a fucking thing, Eren.”

They walk over to the smaller grass field of jumps near the foal pasture that’s on more level terrain than the large field across the road Levi’s been preferring. Vex follows like a large, curious, happy dog, with her head and ears swinging in a relaxed posture. This outdoor ring has jumps that look more similar to what you would see in an arena at a show. They’re large and colorful and employ a lot of tricks of color and space to create an obstacle that’s naturally more intimidating to a horse. He has Eren raise them to about a meter to start and after a warm up points the horse at a single vertical jump that she pops over easily thanks to her size. He uses his hands and reins to balance her through the corner and turn toward a jump with a blue pool of water at the foot of it. He feels her pull herself up like she’s never seen a water obstacle before, and she lifts her head so that he won’t have leverage with the bit when he wrestles back and forth with her trying to keep her straight. She jumps and clears it when he gets her right up against the edge of the water, but it’s an awkward, clumsy leap. He stays up in his stirrups after landing and steers her into a wide circle to collect her and clear her head. 

He gets the thirteen hundred pound animal under him calmed down well enough, but once he steers her toward another jump, Vex seems scared shitless. Every muscle underneath Levi tenses and Vex physically lowers herself all of a sudden, balking, digging her hooves into the earth, and for an instant, Levi’s stomach drops, as he feels that he can’t predict what the horse will do next, and can only try to stay balanced, and wait, and improvise. She leaps right and he pulls left, planting his right fist in her mane and holding the crest of her neck in a death grip for balance as she bounces under him. He forces her to look at the jump she’s terrified of, even if he can’t get her to go over it. He doesn’t tolerate refusals. He points her nose at the center of the poles even as she tries to sidestep away with her long, powerful legs. He kicks her right side with his heel, and suddenly she balks low again, then prances left. He can hear her snorting and flaring her nostrils, and see the top rail between her tense, pricked forward ears. He tries to steady her with a murmur of, “Easy,” but she’s beyond listening to him, too panicked. Suddenly, she changes her mind about refusing to jump. She pushes up off of her hind legs and attempts to clear the jump from a standstill with a rider who is not ready. 

Levi’s hands shoot forward for her thick, black mane, gouging his fingers into it and holding tight so that he doesn’t get left behind. He’s able to keep his heels down well enough that he doesn't get completely unseated. He keeps going, spurring her on as if he physically _ needs _ to move on from that disaster that just happened. He circles her at a canter, maybe a dozen times before he feels the pin pricks of panic fade completely from his wrists and scalp. He fucking hates falling off. Hates even being threatened with it. He finally gets Vex through a line of jumps, using his legs to keep her centered when she picks her head up too high, giving her more leg on the way to the jumps to help her fake at confidence. She’s big enough to get over anything, she’s just green. 

He stops and slows her to a walk after finally doing something right. He feels lucky as he sees Erwin only now walking down to watch, meaning he didn’t see any of that, and he barks at Eren to lower all the jumps while he gives Vex a break. 

When he nears, Erwin holds out the helmet that Levi forgot he left at the barn and asks, “You want to wear this?”

“No,” he complains. “It’s no more likely I’m going to fall off this horse than it is I’m going to get heat stroke from that fucking thing.”

But Erwin creases his lips, gives him that look, and he reaches down, grabs the hard, black helmet, and puts it on even though he’s half sure it’ll kill him. “Is it always like this?” he asks the man on the ground, “Does it keep getting hotter?”

“There are hot days and cool days. Either way, the weather changes often.”

“When the fuck does it change next?” he wants to know.

He shrugs at him. Levi sneers, his temper showing through, and turns Vex to pick up a canter and take some smaller jumps.

He knows now what Erna meant when she said the mare still needs to get her head and her legs under her. At ten years old she’s still green, inexperienced, and immature. She’s slow to start, hesitant at the unfamiliar, and not used enough to her own body to get over things gracefully. She’s got a lot of size, but no agility. Erwin says that horses that large take a long time to mature. Ten years is pretty fucking long by Levi’s estimation and his new boss clarifies that without a single, consistent rider over the years, she hasn’t had a steady training regimen.

While they talk about it, Levi taps his thigh and squints at the treeline across the road. Eren retrieves his riding crop from the grass where he dropped it at his second jump. He takes it back from him and taps that on his leg instead of his fingers while he thinks. 

Erwin asks, “Something wrong?”

“No,” he’s quick to say. Just that he hates when Erna is right. It gets to him. He’s trying to contemplate if it’s worth trying to break this horse in a week just to prove her wrong and risk ruining the horse and making himself look like an ass if he fucks it’s training up. He shakes his head at himself. He’d be doing it for spite. He’s an idiot sometimes. 

He looks down at the blond man with a chiseled and perpetually tense jaw, shielding his eyes from the sun with a large hand, waiting to see what he’ll say, because Levi, an immature, overly competitive and impulsive twenty-four year old, holds too much of his future in his hands. He appreciates that for a moment and decides to behave. “I’ll train her while I’m here, have her ready for CSI classes by December.”

Erwin nods, squinting at the sun rising higher behind him, closer to its noon height. “Have you chosen any meter sixty horses?”

One meter and sixty centimeters is grand prix height. It’s where the prize money starts to be in the six digits if you’re at a large show and it’s an FEI qualifier. At first he hadn’t thought any horses here would be able to do the height, but now, with some rides, he says, “Maybe.”

Erwin nods and doesn’t even ask which horses he’s thinking of. Levi feels he probably already knows. He’s intuitive and more experienced than he initially gave him credit for. He doesn’t know why he expected him to be a rich, forgivably ignorant shithead. Maybe because most owners are. He’s the opposite on both fronts. His whole farm has turned out to be not what Levi would have expected, but in a good way… 

In most ways…

  
  


After surrendering his horse to Eren he searches the farm for her for about fifteen minutes, stubbornly relentless in his need to fucking say  _ something _ to Erna. He finally finds her in the viewing room of the indoor riding ring, a small room with a two way mirror for people to watch the riders in the comfort of a space heater during the colder months. There’s a desk pushed to the far wall, a green leather desk chair kicked out of the way, and the girl he’s been looking for bent over digging through a drawer searching for something like her life depends on it. 

She has a striking graphic effect, Levi thinks, always seeming somehow starkly in contrast with all her surroundings while still being very much a part of them. Her skin seems pale and smooth and glows in the dark of the barn. When he sees her outside her tan looks dark and backlit by sunlight. Here in this dusty light, she looks washed out and sepia toned and his eyes still pinpoint the spots of pink color on her lips and her cheeks when she turns to look at him, gauging him warily while he blocks the exit.

He closes the door behind him. She stands, turning her back fully to the desk and reaching for her hair, baring her chest while she lifts her arms and re-loops her elastic around her loosening ponytail. His voice drops and comes from somewhere in his gut when he says, clear in the still silence, “Erwin said you order the inventory for the shows.”

She purses her lips like she’s fighting to not let words come out, and she nods slowly at him. Then she says, as carefully as stepping over stones across rushing water, “What do you need?”

He steps toward her as if he needs to be closer to be heard, ignoring the fact that it’s so quiet they could hear a pin drop or her crisp gasp for breath before he tells her, “Monogrammed sheets for Vex.”

“Yeah?" she says, with only a hint of sarcasm. "How did your training ride go?” 

He doesn’t trust what he’ll do under that crooked, brazen grin flashing at him while she puts her hands on her exposed hip bones, so he inwardly advises himself to leave, not knowing why he keeps doing this to himself. Turning for the door, he says over his shoulder, “She’ll come along.”

She mumbles at his back, fingers straying to the drawer she was searching again, “Heard better riders ‘an you say the same thing.”

He has to stop as he’s reaching for the door. His hand falls back to his side as he rolls his shoulders and stretches his neck, touching his ear to his shoulder until it cracks. He’d forgotten how physically and mentally exhausting she can be when she does actually talk at him. When he turns back to her, he asks her genuinely, in a straight-faced deadpan free of surprise or any expression at all, “What ‘better riders’? There aren’t better riders than me.”

“You’re such an arrogant prick,” she says, as if she’s exhausted too, with a parted and pouting lower lip like she’s expecting something from him and is disappointed in not getting it. 

“I’m not being arrogant, I’m right,” he tells her with conviction, changing course back toward her, making her back her hips against the desk. If she wants to argue, he’ll fucking argue with her, because he has numbers to back him up. He has national rankings to make his case. But the closer he gets to her, the less it feels like they’re really fighting. He feels pulled to her, wanting suddenly desperately to cling to her like her wet, tissue-paper-transparent tank top. He looks down at the dirty, ragged hem of her shirt. It stops just short of the jut of the clenched lower peak of her abs pointing down at the soft v between her hips. Her hipbones peek over the waist of her sweatpants that are hanging on by a thread. His head flashes with a command, urgent, that he should fall to his knees, pull them off, and bury his face between her legs, and when he shakes it from his mind and finally looks to her face again she’s staring up at him with icy cold eyes narrowed to sharp thorn points at the corners. 

As he’s wondering why her eyes turn a deeper, prettier blue when she’s angry, she starts to say, “You’re--”

But he isn’t interested in what she thinks he is. One crushing, long, searing kiss shuts her up. He seeks out her ribs, squeezes, and lifts her onto her toes, pushing her to sit back on the desk. Her legs are already opening for him and circling around his waist to trap him in her strong-as-a-vice grip. She pulls him in and he feels like he’s underwater, sucking the breath out of her so that he won’t drown. 

His hands roam over her sides, make her spine arch, and trace the maps his fingers have already traveled. He pulls away after she finally lets out a moan that she’d been stifling between deep, heavy breaths. He expects to see her wrecked and bewildered again, he wants to see that look that he saw on her while he was fucking her last time, like she can’t believe this is happening, because he certainly never can. Instead, she smiles like the sly siren that she is. It’s a ‘got you’ smile that makes his insides rise and sink. He steps back, wheeling from her, breaking the hold her legs have around him. She starts to pout, not innocently, but a teasing pout with an arched brow, linking her ankles and kicking her legs slow and playful, fingers splayed and curled over the edge of the desk. She tilts her head at him and her eyes have that wide effect of looking up at him invitingly. He accuses her, “You wanted that to happen, didn’t you - the whole fucking time.”

She shrugs, smirks a little. That’s enough answer. His fingers card through his hair and the skin around his eyes tenses and wrinkles as he wrestles with what to do now.

“You won’t talk to me, but you would have let me fuck you on that desk.” He’s angry. Maybe disgusted even. 

She crosses her arms and her legs, still not talking to him if she can avoid it. His eyes, narrowed in rage, still can’t help sliding down her neck and over a curve of muscle hidden by a black sports bra that makes his jaw clench in frustrated hunger, because he knows there’s a bruise there that’s his. He’d sucked it deep into her flesh, as deep as he came inside her. Her lips purse and she looks off to the side, annoyed that he isn’t playing along the way she’d intended. She obviously wanted what was about to happen before he caught that sly smile. She wants him to ravage her in anger and that’s the only way she wants him.

His nostrils flare. “Fuck you.” He rips the door open. “You’re fucked up,” he emphasizes before slamming it behind him. 

He hisses, “Fuck,” to himself at least ten times on the way to his car, slams the key in the ignition, and stripes the gravel driveway on his way out. He spends a ninety minute drive to the airport cursing at himself, over her, at her, at the fucking universe. He hits the dashboard, hurts his hand, tells himself he should have just fucked her, wonders what’s wrong with him. It was just fucking insulting is the thing, he thinks. First to question his riding ability, and then to treat him like some kind of fucktoy. She can’t stand to talk to him, but would fucking ride his cock like a touch-starved succubus if he let her. It isn’t as flattering as one would think. He feels raw about it and insulted. He isn’t as awful as she makes him out to be. He isn’t as awful as she  _ makes _ him be. 

Farlan can fucking have her, he thinks to himself for the fiftieth time in his vacillations to and away from the appealing, fuckable, manic idea of her. He’s relieved to finally have the decision made for him upon revelation of the fact that she’s even more insane than he’d initially pinned her for. He can handle her wanting to fuck him like she hates him, and he can take her hating him so much that she doesn’t even want to speak to him, but he’ll be damned if he’s going to put up with both at the same fucking time. He won’t let her have it both ways and manipulate him into tearing at her clothes and sucking at her neck whenever she’s in a mood for a rough fuck. He’d rather choke on his jealousy while Farlan falls all over himself trying to make her fall in love so that he can lose interest in her and move on. Up until now he’d prepared himself to tell his friend to fuck off and leave her alone, no small feat, but he would have done it for himself, possessively and selfishly. Now he’s determined to quit her like a shitty habit instead. 

……………………………………………………………………………………………...

  
  
  


When they’re in the kitchen after work, Eren is gushing over Levi again, about what a great rider he is, about how smart and shrewd he is, about how ripped and dark and sexy and Erna cannot take it anymore. She turns around from where she’s washing the bowl she used for cereal that morning and says, “He’s the actual worst.”

“How?” Eren asks, palms outstretched in complete disbelief. 

“He just…” She searches for an explanation, “He… I just hate everything about him. I hate his attitude. I hate his stupid face. I hate his accent and the way he rides and every single fucking thing about him and I wish he would fall off and break a collarbone.”

There’s a stretched out moment of silence from all three of her roommates. It’s Mikasa who is, eventually, surprisingly, brave enough to say, “You are so thirsty for him it is unreal.”

Erna’s face goes through a quick cycle of shock, sarcastic eye rolling and denial, then shrugging and begrudging acceptance. She guesses she’s made herself kind of obvious. Still, she feels called out and says, “Rude.”

“Oh my god, did he give you that hickey?” Eren suddenly shouts. Mikasa looks at him, shakes her head, and covers her face with her palm while breathing a deep sigh. Armin smiles at the back of Eren’s head, then politely escapes, telling them, “I’m getting lunch with Annie.”

“Oh, yeah, I have to shower and then meet Reed.” Eren gets up from the kitchen table and heads for his room. Mikasa says that she’s already gonna be late for spin class, and Erna suddenly is alone, despite having a surplus of fucking roommates.

She feels offended about being left alone, not recognizing the hypocrisy and the irony of that feeling when she’s normally begging the kids to fuck off. She leans against the sink and says loudly to herself, “Cool, I’ll just go jerk off then I guess.” She throws the wet, soapy sponge back into the sink and goes back to her room. She closes the door and does, at least, wait until everyone is gone. She’s not gross. But even with an hour devoted to masturbatory self care with her vibrator and everything, the three orgasms she achieves don’t make her feel any better. With her knees sweating and her legs twitching with aftershocks she groans in frustration. 

She decides to fall back on an old stress reliever and sits up in bed to reach for the gun hanging over it.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next update will be twice as long again. hopefully i'll have time to proofread and edit that one.


	10. chapter thirteen/fourteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> acwnr trio is a fucking train wreck

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter didn't get the editing attention it needed and is clunky in some parts. pls forgive.

“I’m parked illegally, move your arse,” Levi barks at Farlan as he strolls through the airport toward him.

“I missed you too, you pompous goblin.” Farlan attempts to express his affection with a smack to the back of Levi’s head, but gets viciously countered with a forearm, a light punch to the chest, and a scowl. 

“Big bro!”

Levi is too slow to block Isabel as she launches herself at him and almost knocks him over in a full body hug. He’d hug her back if she weren’t squeezing his arms to his sides. “Get off,” he sneers. 

“You know you missed us.”

She lets go of him and takes a step back. The corner of his mouth twitches, but he doesn’t allow a smile. Any response, verbal or physical, would cause more chatter from the two of them, so he keeps his mouth a straight line and starts walking toward his car illegally parked out in front of the airport. 

“Are you gonna ask us how our flight was?” Farlan teases, always wanting to talk to Levi the most when he’s not in the mood to be talked at.

“Are there pubs here? I’m starvin’ to death,” Isabel groans, shouldering her ‘carry on’ backpack that weighs about half as much as herself and is nearly as tall. 

“You gotta take us to the farm first,” Farlan says, as if that’s an obvious fact. 

At the car, Levi checks the windshield for a ticket first, and thanks his luck there isn’t one there. Then asks, “And why the fuck would I take you to the farm?”

Farlan shrugs one careless shoulder and says innocently, “So that we can give it a look.”

“Uh-huh,” Levi says sarcastically, letting them put their bags in the boot of the car. “You know it’s 5pm.”

“And?”

“It’ll be 6 when we get there, _ if _ I take you there. What did you want to do? Say goodnight to the horses? Sing them a lullaby? Tuck them in?”

“So workin’ hours will be over,” Farlan says brightly, “Perfect. We’d hate to be in the way of things.”

“Oh, aye,” Isabel agrees, getting into the front seat without argument, having already punched Farlan in the arm and called ‘shotgun’ once she could see the coastline from the airplane’s window. 

Levi glares at Farlan. He leans down, looks into the car, sees Isabel already fucking with the radio, and asks, “So you’re on his side on this one?” Meaning she’s going to encourage Farlan’s ridiculous attempts at romance with his barn manager.

“I don’t play sides between you two,” she says ironically, acting like she’s much too good to do that, “that would be pointless... and fun.”

“I’m taking you to the house,” he tells them seriously, after starting the car and giving Farlan two seconds to get inside before he starts driving away.

Farlan dramatically throws himself to lie across the back seat and whines, “I’ve already been on a plane for eight hours, don’t make me wait another twelve to meet my future wife.”

Levi guns the car onto the highway while telling him, “You can’t call her that. You haven’t  _ met _ her.”

“Who made you the king of semantics?”

“And the god of love?” Isabel chimes in. 

“You  _ know  _ this is  _ shit _ !” Levi is finally provoked to shout at Isabel, frustrated beyond belief that she is encouraging this. Normally she’s in agreement with him, grumbling about how inconvenient and disgusting Farlan’s sudden dramatic onsets of lovesickness are.

Isabel turns and leans on the center console to look at Farlan with mock sincerity, and say, “Farlan, if you want to fall madly in love with a woman in a country all the way across the ocean, move in with her, and only come home once every ten years, then I will fully and unconditionally support you with everything I have, because  _ I _ want you to be  _ happy _ .”

“Uh-huh, alright,” Levi says, disgusted by her betrayal.

“I truly appreciate that, Iz,” Farlan says. “I’ll take any support, even if it comes from a place of general hatred.”

“Clearly Levi’s just jealous,” Isabel grins.

“In the first place, you pair of fucking head lice,” he says, slapping Isabel’s hand away from the radio. “I saw her first.”

Farlan interjects, “You can’t just call dibs on a woman, Levi, that’s misogynistic.”

“Mhm,” Isabel nods smugly.

“Oh my god,” Levi sighs, exasperated, shaking his head as he recalls all the times Farlan literally called dibs on a pretty face. 

“But, just in case: dibs,” he adds from the backseat. 

“Secondly,” Levi admonishes him, “She isn’t even the kind of girl to be tolerant of this shit you’re on.”

Farlan exclaims, unbothered. “I’ve been  _ saying _ I need a tough woman to keep me in line. I’m ready to settle down.”

“Thirdly,” Levi goes on, “Don’t shit where I eat. If she’s annoyed with you, she’ll take it out on me.” This point feels disingenuous to him as Erna is already constantly angry at him. Not to mention that she was just trying to seduce him not even two hours ago and things are already more dramatic and bizarre than he can fucking handle. What the fuck is she going to think if he shows back up, after the barn’s been closed for the day, with his best mate who’s going to try to love bomb her?

“Annoyed?” Farlan asks incredulously, because he has never felt the sting of rejection once in his life. Not with his sparkling green eyes, light sandy hair, and charming smile. Not with the way he comes onto the women with the utmost confidence and abandon, whisking them off their feet with a superhuman quantity of attention and blind affection. 

“Yes, annoyed,” Levi emphasizes, checking his blind spot and whipping into the fast lane. “Either right out the gate, once you introduce yourself,” which Levi pictures going spectacularly, in a hellish kind of way, “or after you get her hooked, lose interest, and fuck off back home.”

“I would never!”

“You  _ only _ have  _ several _ times  _ already _ !”

“Look, the heart is an unpredictable thing, and--”

“I think he gets off on ghosting them,” Isabel interrupts cheerifully. 

“Only after convincing them he’s genuinely in love,” Levi agrees.

“Aye, but before anyone puts down deposits on a church or caterers,” Isabel adds, as if that’s to be commended.

“There was that one he got as far as taking ring shopping,” Levi says, thinking of Anna, who was three ‘future wives’ ago. 

“Then ghosted,” Isabel says, taking up more evidence for her point. “All in less than a month.”

“I  _ bought _ her the  _ ring _ ,” Farlan says in exasperated defense, as if that clears his conscience.

“You are a serial emotional abuser, and a fucking cunt,” Levi deadpans. That seems to settle it as his friends give their mouths a rest for a full one and a half seconds. Long enough for him to finally concede after a sigh, “I’ll take you to the farm, because I’m not new at you two and I know that if I don’t, you’ll think of some way to be twats about it,” then he adds while they’re grinning, “and because now I’m keen to see how your ‘future wife’ decides to shoot you down. It’s sure to be fucking brutal.”

“He admitted that she’s my future wife,” Farlan points out to Isabel. “He’s coming around.” Then, to Levi, he says, “You can be my best man at the wedding.”

“I should fucking hope so,” Levi rolls his eyes, knowing Farlan has no other friends, despite being perfectly affable and charming on the surface. He and Isabel are the only two people on earth who tolerate him. 

When they get to the farm, Levi slows to a crawl, uncharacteristically not wanting to disturb things. He’ll be fucking humiliated if he has to explain to Erwin that he’s here at a completely pointless hour so that he can allow his best friend to attempt to flirt with Erna. His stomach twists about it. He doesn’t want Erwin to think poorly of him just because he’s a terrible person with impulsive and eccentric friends.

“Nice place,” Isabel says, opening the car window and leaning out to check out the horses they pass as he crawls the car up the driveway.

Levi notices that Farlan’s being quiet, checks his mirror, and then tells Isabel, “He’s asleep.” 

He parks the car on the gravel pad in front of the barn, and she turns around, clucks her tongue, and makes an annoyed sigh. They sit there in silence for a second, then Levi looks to her and says, “We could just take him home and let him sleep.”

“That sounds fucking boring,” she says, narrowing her eyes at him for daring to be boring.

“Why are you so keen on enabling this fucking disaster?” he asks, hissing at her, trying to be quiet. 

“It’s across the fucking ocean, Levi. It’s not like the English girl, or the one in Paris, or even the one in Germany. I could finally get rid of him all the fucking way to the United States. That’d be both of you gone, and me,  _ alone _ , living my best life.”

“Yeah, that’s not gonna happen, is all I’ll say,” Levi tells her, rolling his eyes at this childish shit as Isabel reaches back, slaps Farlan hard on the chest, and startles him awake.

She gets out and stretches high up on her tiptoes, Farlan pours himself out of the backseat and blinks rapidly. After a few seconds, Isabel leans down to look in the window and ask Levi, “You’re not getting out?”

He looks at her like she’s ridiculous. “I’m not  _ helping _ you. I said I’d take you to the farm, and I have.” He crosses his arms after taking the keys out of the ignition.

Farlan has no problem with this. “Cheers,” he says quickly, and points at the farmhouse. “That the main house? I’ll just go knock on the door.”

Levi doesn’t know if this is meant to force him out of the car, but it does. The last thing he needs is Farlan barging in on Erwin and announcing his presence. He looks around and hopes that Erwin isn’t even home. He points Farlan toward the barn and tells him, “She’d be in there if it weren’t already evening. Her house is down there, past those paddocks.”

They’re interrupted by a very loud, not too distant crack and explosion like a bottle rocket. It distracts his friends attention and Isabel asks, “The fuck was that?”

Levi shrugs. “Deer hunters?” because he, at least, can still identify the sound of a hunting rifle.

Isabel looks left, looks right, and asks, “On a horse farm?”

Levi shrugs. He’d believe anything here, however unlikely and inadvisable, such as deer hunting on a horse farm. The sound of another gunshot rips through the air, and Farlan points out, “Doesn’t spook the horses,” gesturing at the herd of five two-year old horses a ways off, eating hay under the shade of their run-in shed without even twitching an ear. 

Levi tilts his head slightly. He has to admit that’s odd, horses generally being fucking terrified of loud noises, though it still doesn't explain anything.

“Well now I wanna go find it,” Isabel says, predictably desiring to do the most chaotic neutral thing that she can. She turns away from them, toward the rear border of the farm, trying to triangulate where the sound is coming from. Farlan helpfully points, “That way,” and begins following his pointer finger to the gate of the closest pasture, to which he and Isabel head while Levi trails behind, hands shoved in his pockets, feeling forced to tag along so that he can bail them out when they get into some fucking trouble as they literally always do. 

They walk acres, having to climb the small, flaking red shale and clay cliff to follow the source of the noise. He knows that messy dark ponytail when he spots it, even from a distance. He’s thought about grabbing it too many times to miss it. He stops Isabel and Farlan, points to Erna, and says, “That’s her,” just before another shot cracks the air. 

Farlan tilts his head quizzically, squints and asks, “Is she shootin’ cans off the fence?”

“Looks like it.”

“Like real life Annie Oakley?” he asks excitedly. 

“Should have guessed,” Levi sneers. Add marksmanship to her list of insane hobbies, right underneath trying to fight him into fucking her brains out.

“She’s perfect,” Farlan murmurs like he’s hypnotized, and he goes jogging off towards her like an idiot.

"Tch."

Isabel, after a beat, realizes that her friend means to just approach a woman with a gun and hearing protection, from behind, without warning, and she goes off running after him, shouting, “Farlan, don’t! They shoot  _ people _ here!”

Levi warns Isabel with an apathetically sarcastic lift of his thin, dark eyebrows, "He's  _ definitely  _ going to get shot,” and he stops, stays put, and watches.

He’s past hearing, but he can see Farlan reach Erna and stop. Half a second later, he can see Erna make some kind of sudden movement just before Farlan falls to the ground, clutching his face. For one ass-clenching second, Levi thinks that he was right and now his best friend is dead. When his sense returns half a second later, he realizes that he didn’t hear any gunshot. Then, like a spring, Farlan pops up from the tall grass, very much alive. 

“Tch.” 

  
  
  


…………………………………………………………………..

  
  
  


Farlan snaps up from the grass, right eye already bruising and starting to swell while Erna stands there stiff and hyperventilating. A redheaded girl runs up, seemingly scolding him, but at a very fast pace with a thick accent so that Erna doesn’t completely catch everything. It doesn’t help that the man who’s spontaneously appeared is trying to hold her eyes with an intense interest. It’s distracting. It does nothing to make this whole situation less unsettling.

“What the fuck is happening?” she asks for the second time with a tilted head, reeling at the very sheer unexpectedness of being snuck up on in the middle of her alone time. 

The short, fast talking redhead tiptoes to smack the back of the much taller man’s head and say something that Erna can’t understand phonetically, but she thinks translates tonally to ‘i love you but what the fuck is wrong with you?’

Erna finally notices a third person, and bristles until she picks up the contour of Levi in the distance. Her brain puts what she knows together, desperate to rapidly make sense of the surprising context it finds itself in, and she remembers the “friends” he’d mentioned ages ago, couples that with the accents that match his, and feels less confused if not yet at ease. 

Her head still tilted at them, she murmurs quietly, “Sorry… you startled me…”

“I told him to stop,” the redhead shouts as her elbow connects with the man’s ribs. She chatters away, “you’re lucky you didn’t take a bullet ta’yer’ead.” She shoots Erna a look, like she’s starting to feel equally fed up with her, and says slowly for her benefit, “He’s harmless. Just feckin’ stupid.”

Erna follows the girl’s eyeline to her hands and realizes that she’s had the rifle aimed on the man since she hit him in the face with it. She gasps in horror, lowers the gun, takes her finger off the trigger, and clicks the safety on. 

Levi, walking up the slow incline of tall grass deadpans at her, “I don’t care if you shoot him.”

“Introduce us, you dick,” the redhead girl hisses while the blond man continues to make moony eyes at Erna who finds his open affection toward her perhaps the most shocking and confusing thing of all that’s occurred in the past minute. 

Levi rolls his eyes, stays at least six feet away behind them, and says toneless and bored, “These are my friends, Isabel and Farlan - This is Erna - Erna, Isabel and Farlan - Isabel and Farlan, Erna.” He looks over his left shoulder, turning toward the direction of the driveway and saying, “You found her. Can we go now?”

“Found me?” Erna asks, warily.

“Aye, the woman of my dreams,” the bubbly blond answers without missing a beat. Erna is unimpressed, but to look at his face you wouldn’t be able to tell that she is not receptive to his adoration. He is unphased and oblivious to her shrewd, narrowed eyes and her unamused line of a mouth.

Erna adjusts her grip on the gun just as she’s about to say that she’s going to need someone to explain what the fuck is going on again. Farlan reaches for her off hand and makes her pull a shocked, disgusted face. She leans away so hard as to be tugging at him when he clasps her hand in his and nonchalantly brings the back of it to his lips and presses a gentle kiss to her knuckles. His grip is crushing, despite how easy he makes it look and Erna’s nose wrinkles and her nostrils flare as she tugs her hand away again. This time, he lets go, and she staggers back a step before catching herself. As if this is all perfectly fine and normal, Farlan winks at her and explains, “We just arrived and wanted to check out the place. Now we’re goin to get drinks.”

“Like fuck we are!” Levi shouts back. 

Farlan ignores him and tells Erna with what sounds like saccharine, genuine sincerity, that it would be lovely if she came. His solicitous focus makes her stomach do a flip and her chest swell in a weird way that makes her frown. No one’s ever  _ wanted _ her in such a very open and unconditional kind of way - not even her friends or family - and this guy doesn’t even know her. She takes in the whole situation and decides that this seems like, at least, a positive kind of weird, especially if free drinks are likely involved. But to appear as if she isn’t sold, Erna stares at him, eyelids lowered and skeptical as she asks, “Where are you going?” 

Levi scoffs and kicks some grass, rolling his eyes again, while Farlan declares, “Anywhere you’d like!”

Erna gives Farlan a look up and down, then with a tired sigh, she says, “I was gonna go to the bar down the road anyway. You can pay for my drinks if you want, but it’s not a date.”

“More than fair!” he smiles wide at her. 

“Right, I’m fucking off.” Levi sneers and starts walking down the gentle slope of grass, toward the gate and his car, seemingly resigned to leave without his friends. 

“Oi!” the redhead turns and jogs to catch up, asking, “How will we get back?” to which Levi answers only by raising his middle finger as he continues to walk away. Erna watches, her eyes narrowing and scowl deepening as he gets further away. Farlan closes the small distance between them, sidles up to her left side, hooks his arm around hers, and says, “Lovely evening for a drink. Did you want to stow that or is it customary to bring it with us?” 

Erna’s eyes flick balefully to the point where his elbow is hooked with hers when his question hits her. She doesn’t know what he’s talking about, and gives him a disgusted look in her confusion, which means looking up and falling into his beautiful green eyes, so clear and eager they slightly startle her out of her cranky suspicion enough to make her take a pause to process his words, and then look to the rifle in her other hand and answer, “Oh… we don’t need to bring it. Now that you mention it, though, it’s not the worst idea.” She slips her arm out of his, slings the rifle over her shoulder, and begins walking toward the gate of the pasture in the distance, her eyes squinting to scrutinize Levi’s body language from this far away, and trying to send him hateful thoughts via telepathy. 

“Hafta stop at the house first,” she says, thinking that some fraction of the trio of newbie brats better be back by now to save her from this whole mess. 

Her eyebrows won’t uncrease as she tries to put together what the fuck is going on here. Last she knew, Levi was angrily rejecting her… advances? If she could call them that. And she’s only out here in the first place, because what makes him think he’s so great, she’s been wondering all day, kicking buckets, cursing at the foals, slamming gates. He isn’t better than her, she thinks angrily, her steps crushing the grass. 

And here he comes, she thinks - while she’s just minding her own business, dealing with her feelings about being rejected - with a tall, beautiful, blond friend to sweep her off her feet instead? Like she’s that repugnant. Not only does she need to be rejected, but also redirected so that he won’t be bothered by her because she's so disgusting? She huffs to herself unconsciously and decides that she fucking hates him - too much to even want to fuck him anymore. But if his weird friend wants to pay her bar tab and get nothing in return, then, yes, he can. She deserves at least that much. 

She clears her throat and spits at the ground through the side of her mouth. Instead of being disgusted, blondie smirks at her with a twinkle in his eye. Erna’s eyebrows knit together and she asks, “What the fuck is your deal?”

“No deal,” he answers on beat with a smile.

“You’re friends with that prick?” she asks while taking the cigarettes from the back pocket of her shorts, nodding in the direction of their cranky mutual friend about fifty feet ahead. 

“Oh aye,” he says happily, without a misstep, he nods toward Levi and says, “he’s our favorite freak of nature.”

This, finally makes Erna smile. Farlan continues, “He has had a meter long stick up his arse for as long as I’ve known him.” 

Erna plucks herself a cigarette from the pair she put in her shirt pocket. She’s patting herself down, feeling for a lighter, while Farlan goes on about Levi’s many flaws, and her attention gets so focused on finding her missing lighter in whichever pocket it got to, and on keeping her footing as the incline of the pasture deepens, that when she feels a light touch to the front of her shoulder she startles and stops abruptly. She glares at Farlan’s hand for the audacity. The hand he’d barely touched her with is already retreating, bringing her piercing eyes to his other hand, the fingers of which are extending a shiny, gold finished lighter that glints the setting sunlight toward her before he flicks it open. She stares at it while he tilts his head at her and flashes her a heart-melting smile.

“You’re pretty easily spooked,” he comments easily, nodding toward her hand, defensively clutched at the strap of the rifle at her collarbone. He teases her with, “That an American thing?”

Erna quickly releases her grip on the strap, puts the cigarette in her lips, lets him cup his hand close to her face, and inhales gratefully, trying to hide how embarrassed she is with her show of jumpiness. As he slides it back into his pocket, she tells him defensively, “Well you snuck up on me, the fuck out of nowhere, while I had headphones on, and tapped me right on the fucking shoulder, so excuse the fuck out of me if I’m on my guard.”

“Fair enough,” he laughs, like they’re even. “Should have learned after the first shot to the eye. My mistake.” 

Erna’s lips tense in a small cringe. She did notice the darkening bruise around his eye, but was trying to ignore it, like that would make it go away. If she’s supposed to feel guilty about accidentally nailing him in the eye with the butt of the rifle when he startled her… well… she doesn’t. But she mutters, “I’ll get you an ice pack.” 

“Gracious of ya,” he says with a little awe, like she’s some kind of angel.

She’s getting tired of wondering if he is a genuine fool or a sarcastic prick and her nostrils flare. She speeds up, exhales a cloud of smoke out the side of her lips, and says, “Creepy fucker.”

He catches up with her at the lip of the short cliff that bisects the pasture. To her surprise, he doesn’t hesitate to hop and slide down the cliffside, getting his footholds on the same rocks and tree roots that the adolescent horses make use of every morning when they run down to get their breakfast. He makes it without a misplaced step, as surefooted as any of the bratty thoroughbreds, and turns when he reaches the bottom to flash her a smirk and a wink. Erna pauses, looks up at the sky, takes a deep breath, and wonders what she’s getting herself into this time. Seems more like something than like nothing, especially with the way the sky is turning a bright, fireball pink above the trees. 

Farlan waits with unwavering patience as she takes another drag off her cigarette. She looks down and takes him in, she likes him at a distance. He seems more harmless that way. 

He offers his hand to help her down when she is about to jump the last few feet and she ignores him, hopping down to level ground on her own, puffing on her cigarette, and continuing to the gate. She can hear Levi and Isabel in the parking lot. When she gets closer, she can see him leaning against his car door, arms crossed while his even shorter friend makes large hand and arm gestures at him.

As she gets closer and their voices get louder, she realizes they aren’t getting any clearer. Her hand pauses on the latch to open the gate of the pasture, and she tilts her head in confusion toward their voices, like a dog. 

“Is that English?” she has to ask Farlan. 

“Only about half of it,” he smiles. “Isabel doesn't like to fight so people can hear.”

“I can hear her just fine,” Erna points out.

He leans on the gate that she’s hesitating to open, and says, slowly and quietly conspiratorial, “It’s mostly gaelic. Do you speak any?”

“I didn’t think Irish people even spoke it anymore.”

Then he says something she can’t understand, with a cocky smile, like that’s supposed to be so fucking charming. She rolls her eyes at how well that would work on her if she wasn’t already so distracted by his dark haired friend leaning on his car looking irate as fuck. It’s unhealthy how much she loves that look on him. She flicks the latch on the gate, pushes it open, and tells Farlan, “Your accent is dumb.”

“Would you prefer a new one?” he asks, as if he could sincerely change it if she wanted him to. 

She ignores him and takes up a brisk pace past Levi and Isabel, through the parking lot, and toward the house. She hurries around the corner of the first paddock, Farlan trailing her, before she hears footsteps bounding up behind them. Isabel at a dead run, shouts, “Wait up, we’re coming too,” and then jumps on Farlan’s back, hooking her arms around his neck, climbing him like a monkey just to mess his hair up and then swing down and hit the ground running when he tries to slap her off. 

She runs past Erna, who is quickly getting sick of the shenanigans, and is around the corner before she can say, “What the fuck?”

“She’s a...” Farlan cringes and trails off as he pushes his hair back into order, like he’s trying very hard to be tolerable of an annoying little sister so that he won’t seem like a dick to the woman he’s trying to impress. 

Erna looks past him to search for Levi, but when she hears the slap of the screen door she turns back around and runs to catch up with Isabel. When she gets inside, the redhead is already upstairs in the kitchen making friends with her roommates. Erna sighs, grabs an ice pack from the freezer, and runs back downstairs to stop Farlan from infiltrating her house too. She bursts out the screen door, expecting to run into him in his fervor to attach himself to her like velcro, but instead she finds him obediently waiting on the porch, and even more shocking, straight across from the door, leaning on the porch railing and facing her, is Levi - his brooding, presence taking up more space than his actual size. Seeing him in real life, on her porch, throws her off, and she stands there dumbstruck while Farlan takes the ice pack from her hand and lifts it to his eye. 

Erna isn’t at all new to working with Grand Prix equestrians, but she’s never found herself casually socializing with one, standing on her porch, about to smoke a borrowed cigarette like a normal fucking human being. She’s caught off guard by how alien it feels - how small her experience of him is, and how little she knows about him, despite seeing him every damn day… despite letting him fuck her in the hayloft. She realizes she’s staring only when his silver eyes flick up and catch her. 

He mutters something presumably gaelic at his friend, ignoring her rudely and obviously, and she stomps her booted feet off of the doorstep. She lights a cigarette of her own, having retrieved her disposable, plastic lighter from the counter while upstairs, and she calls up impatiently, “Y’all comin?”

There’s a pause to the loud chatter up in the kitchen before Eren yells down, “Wait, we’re invited too?”

Her eyelids flutter and her eyes threaten to roll back all the way up into her brain. She supposes she didn’t tell them that, but does she always need what she’s just said clearly stated back to her? Sliding her wallet from her back pocket with her free hand, she yells, “Yeah, you can come, but I’m leaving right now,” while she checks that she has enough cash to cover at least one drink each for the kids she just invited to a fucking townie dive bar. 

Before she can tap her foot twice, Eren is running down the stairs. Out of breath, he waves and says hi to Levi, introduces himself to Farlan, and dimly queries Erna with, “You said the bartender wouldn’t let us in,” referencing every single other time Eren and Co. have asked her about the local dive bar only a short walk from the farm that she is known to occasionally patronize. 

Erna looks away from all three men now staring at her, awaiting a response. She takes a drag off her cigarette and after a moment, she says without a hint of shame, “I lied.”

Just then the other three come down and Mikasa reminds them, “We’re not twenty-one.”

“I know,” Erna says quickly back, full of impatience, wishing everyone would just follow her and shut up. She shoves her wallet back into her pocket. 

“What’s that mean?” Isabel asks.

“Why wouldn’t you be allowed in?” Farlan asks, genuinely curious. 

“Twenty-one is the drinking age here, you idiots,” Levi tells them before Erna can have the pleasure. 

Isabel gasps in shock. Farlan looks horrified. Erna jumps down the three steps to the ground, and tells them, over her shoulder, “I’m walking.”

Farlan puts his hands on Eren’s shoulders and moves him to the side and out of his way so that he can run to catch up with her while Levi erupts into a new shouting match with Isabel because she can get fucked if she thinks he’s walking anywhere. He didn’t even want to be here, he protests, as Erna smirks to herself. Farlan reaches her side, and she reminds him, “This isn’t a date. I just don’t want to pay my own bar tab. I had to pay my share of the house bills this week and things are tight.”

“You’re a sensible and practical lady and I admire that greatly.” 

Well. No one can accuse her of being dishonest anyway… or a lady. Erna’s head lolls to the side carelessly as they walk down the road, as close to the grass ditch as she can manage. After some pondering, she just asks him, “Why, though?”

“Wh’d’y’mean ‘Why, though?’” he asks her teasingly, with another of those smiles that is criminally beautiful and disarming. 

“Well you’re either pretending that you don’t expect anything, or you genuinely don’t expect anything, and I don’t even know which I think is creepier.”

He chuckles lightly at her. “Might not be so black and white. Have you considered that I may just like to waste money?”

“Uh huh.” She answers, clearly not buying it.

“It doesn’t hurt that you’re terribly beautiful.”

“Shut the fuck up.”

Erna checks over her shoulder that the kids are following behind. She sees them single file, hugging the ditch like her. She feels like a mama duck for a moment. Levi and Isabel aren’t following behind them and Erna hopes they decided to go home, even though that leaves her with a man who has no way of leaving. She shakes her head and tells herself that isn’t a “her” problem. She has a very pesky instinct to care for people. She hates that part of herself. It makes her feel weak.

“So how are you friends with that…” She pauses, with a thousand words on the tip of her tongue and her speech stalls out with the overwhelming amount of choices. “With that…” she tries again.

“Flea circus ringmaster?” He supplies for her. 

She toggles her head back and forth, as if testing the insult in her brain, then offers, “Narcissistic creep?”

“Bit of a bollocks.”

“But you  _ are _ friends?” she asks.

“Best mates. Known him since he was even shorter than he is now.”

Erna stops him at the bridge, to let the kids catch up. He leans his tall, fit body against the rusting old structure while she tells him, “I don’t get it.”

“Get what?”

“You’re, like,” she hates saying what she’s about to, and purses her lips while crossing her arms before coming out with, “You’re all tall, and blond, and handsome, and charming,” and as his grin grows wider with each word, she scowls at him deeper and warns him, “Don’t take any of that as a compliment.” 

“Wouldn’t dream of it. Those are just facts.”

“And he’s so… not.” 

Farlan raises an eyebrow at her. He doesn't think that she’s wrong, but he isn’t used to anything but high praise of his best friend who is acknowledged universally as one of the best grand prix riders internationally. While she crosses her arms and looks to the corner they just turned, waiting for the brats to round it, Farlan tells her, “We grew up together. It’s like that.”

“Like what?”

For the first time, he seems to pause to think about what he's saying, but then only answers, after a squint of his green eyes, “Dunno. Seems to work that way when you come up together. What do they call it? Trauma bonding?”

Erna snorts a surprised laugh at his choice of words. “That bad?”

“Kenny Ackerman can be a right mean cunt.” Erna’s curiosity is sparked, so Farlan says, “Iz and I were there before Levi, you know. We grew up next to each other. She made me stomp up Kenny’s driveway with her when we were six and ask that mean sonofabitch to let us help with barn chores so that she could be near the ponies.”

“I’m still shocked that he has friends.”

The brats catch up and Armin thanks them for waiting. Erna quirks her lips like she’s extremely put out, in order to hide the fact that she waited because she would worry about them crossing the skinny bridge by themselves. People drive fast on these backroads and there’s barely room for one car on the bridge that they have to cross to get to this piece of shit bar. It’s really not a bridge meant for pedestrians, but she likes walking it better than driving to the place she plans to get shit-faced. Makes her feel responsible.

On the other side of the bridge that crosses a deep ravine dug out by the river, is the small, wood-shingled, dilapidated bar that’s been there as long as the bridge. Longer than the train tracks across from it. Hundreds of years. “The bar outlasted the trains,” Erna points out, as if that’s an impressive accomplishment, nodding at the decrepit platform across the road. Although, historically, booze has outlasted everything but sex.

Armin gets out one last hesitant, “Are you sure we’re allowed in?” as they walk up.

“Honey,” Erna answers, “If they didn’t serve minors, how would they stay open in the middle of fucking nowhere like this?”

Levi and Isabel whip into the parking lot in Levi’s car just as the others are walking up the steps to the wooden wraparound porch. Farlan shouts at them for being fucking lazy. Levi’s response is to immediately go to get back in the car like he’s going to leave them there, but Isabel grabs him by his forearm and starts punching him in the shoulder with her pointy little knuckles, telling him that it’d be fucking rude not to buy his friends a round after their flight. 

“I’ll buy you a round at a real pub, not this shithole.”

“Hey,” Erna drones, sarcastically offended. She fully knows that he’s right about it being a shithole.

Isabel pulls him, hard, out of the car. “It’s homey,” she says with a grunt. “Or are you too posh for anything but hotel bars and chardonnay anymore?”

As he takes high and personal offense to this, they both switch to that quick half-gaelic half-english for the rest of what seems like a pretty deep argument. Erna shrugs with a sardonic smirk and finally pushes the door open, ushering her roommates inside, letting go so that it almost swings shut in Farlan’s face. He catches it with his palm. He’s quick. Erna can almost admire that. 

The bartender looks away from the tv screen hanging from a mount over the bar and squints his beady eyes at the new patrons. When he spots Erna, he scowls, and demands identification. Armin, thinking he means to collect ID from all of them, begins to sweat until Erna pushes him out of her way to reach across the bar and point her finger in the bartender’s face and say, “You know full well that I am twenty-fucking-two, Robert.”

The way the man screws his face into a snarl, would indicate that his preferred name is not Robert, but he just scowls at her, leaning on the bar and baring his dirty teeth. “I… D…”

Erna flares her nostrils, and remains posed, finger pointed in the man’s face, for a beat, before suddenly shrugging, exhaling a deep sigh, blowing her bangs away from her eyes, and taking her wallet out. She slides her drivers license across the bar. The man takes his time looking at it, for show, to be a jerk. She tells him, “This is harassment. You literally never card anyone else.”

“ID for you. Every. Time,” he answers, before sliding her license back to her and turning away to watch the tv again. 

“Hey,” Erna slaps the bar angrily, “Wild turkey. While I am young. Unless you want me to serve myself.”

When the man reaches for a bottle with a gruff, put upon sigh, she shouts, “No, the 101 proof. This guy’s paying.” She reaches back for Farlan and pulls him forward by his shirt. He offers the bartender a good natured smile and receives a withering look. From near a pool table, another man’s voice comments, “Save your money, pal.”

Quick as a flash, Erna responds loudly, “Fuck you, Mark.”

“Been there. No thanks.”

Erna rolls her eyes and cringes. This kind of shit is why she told the brats that they weren’t allowed in this bar in particular. She has a history here. Even she doesn’t enjoy coming here. But you can’t beat it for convenience. Farlan, already sliding a matte black credit card across the bar, shouts toward the unseen voice, “Oi, that’s my future wife and you’ll show her some respect!”

“Stop calling her that,” Levi deadpans from the door he’s being pulled through by his little redheaded friend. 

Just to be contrary, Erna drones tonelessly, “You can call me whatever you want if you’re buying my drinks,” and as if on cue, the bartender slams a short, dirty glass down on the bar and fills it with a generous double shot of whiskey, no ice. She tents her fingers over the rim and lifts it carefully, ushers it to the other end of the bar, to a stool in front of a decrepit jukebox, facing the entryway, and next to a side door that goes right back onto the wraparound porch. Her favorite stool, the best place for keeping an eye on everything. 

She watches the bartender sigh and sputter with every drink order, as if having paying customers is a burden and bending over to grab a bottle is hard labor, but she was right: he doesn't card anyone. He doesn’t even comment on the obvious teenagers she brought with her. 

She looks down and her drink is already gone. She missed herself drinking it, but can taste proof of it on her tongue. She knocks on the bar with the bottom of her glass, her obnoxious signal that she would like another. She’d like to get as drunk as possible, get out of here quickly, and go sleep it off alone. That would suit both her and the bartender fine, so he walks off in the middle of Eren ordering a beer for himself, and splashes more whiskey into and around her glass. 

“I see you still can’t pay for yourself,” a voice full of hatred and spite snakes its way to her ears as she gulps down her second double shot in three swallows. 

“Could if I needed to, Len,” she bites back at the man on the corner stool two away. "I'm just too pretty." 

The six foot tall, late twenty something man with a prematurely receding hairline that he seems to refuse to acknowledge slides his drink across the bar. Erna doesn’t shrink away when he sits down next to her, awkwardly close. She doesn’t betray how intimidating that actually is. Far be it for her to give him the satisfaction. “I work hard; need to unwind somehow,” she tells him calmly. “Speaking of which, how long have you been laid off?”

“You don’t know shit about hard work.”

Erna knocks on the bar with her glass again. “'Course not.”

“You play with horses,” he says, as if it’s a cute hobby. “This bar is for farmers, you know.”

Erna nods at the bartender as he tops her off again, but he glares at her and spits on the ground before turning back to the tv screen. He tolerates her because she’s an alcoholic who always gets her tab paid, either by her own cash, or through a man actively trying to get her drunk. She walks a fine line as he sees it, between being very good for business, and very bad for business. He treats her warily like the undomesticated animal she is.

She leans toward the man to her right, though she finds him too repulsive for words, and she asks him, as if it’s a secret, “Now, Len, do you make sure to tell every girl who sets foot in here that this is a highly exclusive bar for big manly men, or is it just me?” She silently wonders as well if it is because he is one of many men still bitter about buying her drinks without getting anything they think they’re entitled to. They can’t just outright say, ‘Hey, I paid for you to get drunk and now I think you should fuck me,’ because they’re just short of being man enough to be that bold. Instead they give her passive aggressive shit from their bar stools for the rest of her goddamn life.

“Fucking bitch.” 

He retreats back to his corner stool, with the two men he’s been drinking with every Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday night for at least two years, just oozing into Erna’s space, hating her more all the time for being rude, loud, unafraid, and a woman at the same time. He’s one of many people who make this bar a second home and hate Erna for existing there. It’s not like she asked to be accepted in this shitty community - if anyone could call it that. She’s just a woman with a vice and no car. If there were a frou-frou bar with sugary martinis and clean floors in the same proximity to her house, then she would gladly walk there. But this is it. They are stuck with each other and she isn’t going to apologize. 

Her whiskey got refreshed somewhere in her conversation, and Erna brings it to her lips compulsively, to chase reality away. Her vision is already a little swimmy, thanks to skipping dinner before coming here. She focuses and unfocuses on her brats, shuffling over to fill the stools to her left. Eren reaches for the plastic sheet of a menu stuck to the bar by condensation and Erna warns him, “It’s all frozen and microwaved. I wouldn’t bother.”

Eren cringes and whines. Erna snaps at him that he wanted to come there, before her swimming vision rests on Levi. Isabel is next to him, charming the bartender with her freckles and her accent and her giggle. Erna starts to feel like she could understand this friendship. Maybe if she brought a couple of adorable, charismatic friends with her everywhere, then she wouldn’t get as much shit from people as she does. 

Len calls over to her, in that teasing, bullying, shithead way he has about himself, and asks who her new friends are. She ignores him, so that she can shout at the back of the half bald, sweaty bartender’s head that she needs a refill and that maybe he should keep that bottle nearer by if he wants to save himself the trouble of walking so much. 

He obviously ignores her while he offers Isabel a beer on the house. While his attention is on her, Farlan leans and reaches over the bar, takes the bottle of whiskey, and brings it to Erna, taking her glass and filling it to the rim. She gives him a tired look. She appreciates the initiative, but doesn’t appreciate how cute he knows he is. Further, when she reaches for the glass,Farlan snatches it up before her fingers can grasp it and he shoots it past his lips like water. Setting it back down on the bar and giving it another refill, he says, "At least give me a chance to catch up."

“You didn’t say I had to drink  _ with _ you. That  _ wasn’t _ the deal. You can pay for my drinks, just don’t talk to me.”

“She’s a frigid bitch,” comes the commentary from the corner. When Erna’s head whips around, Len’s already sipping his beer like he couldn’t have just said that with a glass to his lips.

She’s about to tell him where to stick his opinions, but Farlan interrupts, calmly saying, “I appreciate the concern, stranger. Luckily my own sense of masculinity isn’t so fragile as to be threatened that easily.”

“The fuck did you just say?”

Erna is about to tell Len something simple, like, ‘he called you ‘gay’,’ even though that isn’t the case, but he’s a simple man and it’s going to take something simple to humiliate him, and she’ll gladly help with that. Farlan is too quick for her again, with his mouth and his hands, pouring himself another whiskey without spilling a drop, pounding it, setting the glass back down, and answering, “Do you not speak English? I said I think you’re scared of strong women because you can only feel like a big man when other people are small.”

Erna tilts her head toward him, eyes on the glass she’s stolen back while he was talking. While she pours for herself, she sing-songs at Farlan, “That’s still too many words. You have to dumb it down.”

“This is turning into a primary school composition.” Farlan lifts the bottle of whiskey easily from the hand Erna had cupped protectively around it. He takes a swig from the mouth of the bottle, and she pouts and cringes. She wasn’t even thrilled about sharing a glass with him. She’ll do a lot of gross things, but she is extremely reticent to put her mouth on anything another person’s mouth has touched. 

She crawls over the bar and leans over to look and see if there’s something like a clean rag she can wipe that thing off with when Farlan’s done with it, as if the bottle was clean before his mouth touched it… as if anything in this bar has ever been clean. Len tries to keep his nascent confrontation with Farlan going by saying, “What the fuck are you talking about?” 

She sits back down, resigned to just pour herself another shot and hope that the alcohol itself will kill any mouth germs Farlan just got on the bottle, but when she looks to see if he’s done with it, the very last of what was at least a half full bottle of whiskey is disappearing past his lips. He tilts his head back fully to get every last drop. Erna’s shoulders slump. 

Len laughs, knowing, like she does, that’s the only bottle of Wild Turkey 101 in this fucking bar and now she has to settle for something like Jack Daniels or Jameson instead. Enjoying this immensely more than someone else would, because he also knows that she only orders 101 when she won’t have to pay for it herself, he says, spitefully, “Bad luck, fucking slut.”

“You’ll watch your mouth before it gets forcibly censored for you, mate.”

Erna turns to her right, resting her chin on her hand, looking at Len as calmly as a cat. “I believe that’s the Irish equivalent of calling you, ‘Buddy,’ buddy.”

“You can’t censor free speech here, buddy, this is America.”

Erna cuts him off and with a dead, straight face says, “It isn’t. It’s New Jersey.”

Ignoring her, he continues, “And since you’re new here, I’ll give you another tip: that girl--” Erna sarcastically mimes looking dramatically shocked when he points at her. “-- is a dirty, stuck up cunt and there’s a reason everyone hates her.”

“Now hold on,” Farlan says, angrily pointing his finger at the man across the bar before turning to Erna, with a completely contrasting, solicitous tone. “One thing: Is ‘cunt’ a slur like? Levi specifically told me I’m not to say that here.”

Erna nods calmly, and confirms, “It very much is.”

“So he just called you something really vile.” 

Mikasa mutters, “Douchebag,” into her beer.

“Probably the most vile thing you could say to a woman,” Erna confirms, completely chipper about it, like she’ll wear it as a badge of honor. 

“Right. Just making sure.” Finally lowering his finger and looking Len in the eye again, he says, “You don’t look like you need a written invitation outside, but you do seem dim, so I’ll give you a verbal one.”

Erna rolls her eyes while Len and his two friends stand up and puff their chests out like caricatures. She sounds bored when she says, “Do not act like this bar is too nice to fight in. I started a fight in here literally last month.” She points with her thumb at the jukebox over her shoulder that’s got a crack in one of its lights from a misplaced punch.

Farlan, already pulling the pack from his pocket, and putting a cigarette between his lips, says, “Right, but I want a smoke, and Levi said you don’t do that in pubs here, which is fucking mad, by the way.” While Len and his goons, not completely sure what to make of him, stand there, Farlan smacks the bar, finally getting the attention of the bartender away from Isabel. He rolls his shoulders, says he wants a bottle of Jameson when he comes back, and asks Levi to place a bet on how many punches he can knock this big fucker out with. 

Isabel immediately shouts, “No gambling!”

“It’s not  _ gambling _ ,” Farlan shouts back as if this is an unending argument.

“You have a problem,” she mutters, rolling her eyes.

Levi deadpans, “I’ll bet you that nickel that’s been laying on the bar since we fucking got here.” He nods toward the coin left neglected on the bar, and the bartender swoops in to sweep it into his claws.

“What odds would you need to bet the bar tab?”

While Isabel harshly tells him not to do it, Levi rolls his eyes, like he’s going to ignore his friend’s attempts to provoke him. Behind Isabel’s head, however, Levi holds his hand up and makes a sign for  _ less than two  _ and Farlan nods, says, “Easy. Have your money ready,” and walks out the side door, the whole time acting as if Len isn’t even a very consequential part of this. With a truly baffled expression, Len looks to his friends, who are not much help, and after some slight confusion, they decide to plow forward with this fight whether it’s still even a fight or not, and they follow. 

“Ugh,” Erna groans, acting disgusted by the whole situation. “Now I want a cigarette.” Standing and covering the fact that she just kinda likes violence and is always eager to watch a fight. Armin, Mikasa, and Eren follow her out of fear, concern, and expectation. 

Farlan is lighting his cigarette in the gravel parking lot, immediately in front of the porch Erna is watching from, where she’s acting aloof by saying, “This isn’t impressive, by the way.”

“Not trying to impress you,” Farlan calls over to her as Len squares up in front of him. He closes his lighter, returns it to his pocket, and reminds her, “You said this isn’t a date.”

Erna smirks, unable to deny that he’s clever enough to be at least passably cute, and she bends at the waist to rest her chin on her crossed forearms over the porch railing and watch with rapt attention while the cigarette between her lips glows and dims with her breathing. She’s expectant and eager for this to finally get started, but they are momentarily distracted again as Isabel forces the side door open, letting it slam loudly behind her. She places her hands on her hips and shouts at Farlan, “Levi sent me to keep you accountable to your bet.”

Farlan nods, and Erna is excited that she might finally get to see someone’s face get busted when he winds up, but just as he’s about to follow through, Isabel shrieks, “Farlan Church!”

“What?” He spins around while Len stands stunned, and holds his hands out in frustration at her.

“You are a guest in this country and you will mind your manners and let him throw the first punch.”

He points to the bruising surrounding his right eye and shouts back at her, “I’ve already  _ got _ a black eye!”

Isabel gives him a serious look, and he sighs like he’s being scolded by his mother, rolls his shoulders, cracks his neck, and tells a very confused Len, “Go ahead then.”

“What?”

“You can have a swing before I concuss you.”

Len doesn’t need to ask twice, and gladly throws a punch that Farlan ducks beneath so that he won’t have to suffer two black eyes in one day. Isabel boos, and before the sound of her jeering has even died out, Farlan’s left fist connects with Len’s nose, then his right fist cracks against his cheek bone. Farlan holds his hands up, showing Isabel that he’s done, telling her, “Less than two,” as Len slowly wavers for a second before swiftly falling like a sack of manure, dead weight on the ground, clearly unconscious. Possibly dead, though Farlan doesn't seem concerned. 

Erna can only stare with her jaw hanging in shock. Farlan looks to her, sees her reaction, tilts his head, and, suddenly shifting to concern, he asks her sincerely, “I’m sorry, do you not do that here?”

“This is a normal Thursday at home,” Isabel brags.

Erna blinks a few times, then suddenly pushes herself up from the railing, bright eyed and rushing to say, “No, no, no, that’s fine!” as Len’s friends kneel and try to wake him up. “You’re fine!” 

She hops over the railing as easily as a fence, trotting over to Farlan in the gravel, she shamelessly places her hand on his bicep and asks, “Do you think you could do that a few more times, actually?” because there is more than one douchebag at this bar she’d like to see knocked the fuck out.

“Don’t see why not,” he says easily, shaking out his right hand and taking another drag from the cigarette that never left his lips. 

Erna looks down at Len’s one friend, still trying to prod him awake. The other is running inside, probably to tell the bartender to call the EMT under the table as it’s an unspoken rule that the cops are not called down here. Not for anything. 

Without warning, Erna takes a small step, winds up, and kicks her enemy’s limp body with enough force to hurt her own foot through her canvas sneakers, hard enough to make his kneeling friend flinch and fly backwards onto his ass. Farlan breathes a small laugh, and says, “You know, they say you shouldn’t kick a man when he’s down, but I’ve found it’s the best time. He’s on the ground, he can’t defend himself. When else are you supposed to do it?”

“I know,” Erna agrees, “Right?”

Isabel, having gone inside to tell Levi the results, comes back out and shouts down from the porch, “He said, ‘less than two.’ You still have to pay the tab.”

“He was already out on the first!” Farlan yells back with great indignance. “The second was for symmetry’s sake!”

Isabel shrugs as if she can’t do anything about it and sighs. "He said, ‘ _ two-even is not ‘less than two’ _ .”

Farlan throws his cigarette on the gravel and breaks away from her to storm up the steps, too fired up about this on principle to enjoy the fact that Erna is just beginning to finally warm up to him. He shoves the door to the bar open, shouting inside as he goes, “First of all, you short badger bastard --” 

Erna doesn’t get to hear the rest as the door swings shut on him. She purses her lips about this, because whatever is following the introduction to that sentence is probably really good. But she only just started this cigarette. 

Eren, after two full seconds of tense silence, asks, “Should… we… uhhh… go?”

“What?” Erna asks sarcastically, “Do you not like the atmosphere of our local bar?”

Isabel says that she loves it, personally. Eren stammers, “I’m more, just, like, worried about getting arrested.”

“Well, that would be a first,” Erna comments, “but knowing my luck since you kids have showed up…” She pauses to think. “... Yeah, maybe we should. Let me go make sure we’re settled.”

She rushes a few more drags of her cigarette before flicking it toward Len’s unconscious body and going inside. Upon looking around Erna sees that the bar has cleared out of all but the most unaware and non-sentient regulars glued to their stools. The bartender is now watching Farlan and Levi argue with increasing volume. 

“Two punches isn’t ‘less than two,’” Levi scoffs, without looking away from the football game he made the bartender switch the channel to. 

“That’s an invalid bet, then, because you’re assuming a universe where fractions of punches are a thing.”

“I will _ show  _ you a half of a punch if you want to keep going,” Levi warns him.

“Price is Right rules. I didn’t go over two. That counts as less than two.”

“The fuck are you on about?” Levi rolls his eyes. “Just admit that you failed at maths and you didn’t understand that less than two means fewer than two.”

Erna cuts in to ask the bartender, “Are we square?” to which she receives a grim head shake. 

She presses her pointer finger to the bar, lifts and forces it down three times,  _ thud thud thud _ , to get the boys’ attention, and tell them, “We’re heading out. Time to pay up.”

“It’s only been ten minutes!” Farlan cries. 

“Good,” Levi stands up, relieved they’re finally getting out of this hellhole. The bartender frowns and glares at them as he presses their bill to the bar. 

Farlan gives Levi a smile. The charming one he uses on people when he wants them to do things for him. It does not work and his friend stares at him with a  _ seriously done with your shit _ expression. Farlan waits a beat, then suddenly shrugs, lolls his head toward the bartender, and says, “Alright, run the card I gave you.”

He goes to follow Erna as she trails along the bar, back out the side door where her roommates are waiting, and he tells Levi, “Sign that for me, would you?”

“Why the fuck would I --” 

As Erna’s opening the door, she hears Levi shout, “Is that my  _ fucking card _ ?!”

She looks down to hide her smile from her roommates who begin to follow her. Farlan catches up with her, and asks, “Done already? What’s next, my golden-skinned goddess?”

“Farlan, get in the fucking car,” Levi shouts angrily as he stomps out the door. Isabel hops off the porch and calls shotgun. 

“I have to walk my future wife home,” he calls back without stopping. 

Erna tells him, for the sake of being clear, “I’m not fucking you, no matter what you call me.”

“Agreed,” he answers back quickly, “I’d have to take you on a real date first.”

“No, I mean, like ever. Like, just to be fair, for your information. You can stop trying. It’s a waste of time and money.”

“Point taken, but not a waste if it’s for you.”

She turns to look over her shoulder where Levi’s slamming his car door, and she asks, wonderingly, “Would it piss him off if you didn’t go back right now?”

“Immeasurably.”

Erna purses her lips to the side, tilts her head one way and the other, making her deciding face, and then she tells him, “You can sleep on the couch.”

“Perfect. I’ll make you breakfast.” He claps his hands and rubs them together. 

“You will not, and I want you out before six,” Erna says sternly, while wondering if that’s enough to make Levi jealous... if he even cares enough to get jealous about it, like she’s hoping he will.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for late update. it be like that sometimes.


	11. chapter fifteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry i disappeared for six weeks. i got big sad and big executive dysfunction - they kind of go hand in hand ig. gonna be working on updating to the point i should be caught up to by now.

The next morning, Isabel and Farlan are at the edge of the grass field across the road, standing close to each other, placid and silent, but for a sudden chorus of shouting every time Levi passes by them on the horse he's riding.

“Turn your toes in,” Farlan yells as Levi comes up on the corner, “I could fit a tennis ball between your leg and the saddle.”

“Fuck  _ off _ ,” Levi groans.

“Get your heels down,” Isabel chimes in helpfully, with the most basic bit of beginner rider advice. 

Farlan cups a hand to his mouth as Levi trots past, and shouts, “You’re leaning forward.”

“And riding off your knee!” Isabel adds in harmony.

None of these things are true. They know enough to know that his riding is flawless. But where would the fun be in praising him? Once he’s out of shouting distance, they quiet down again and Isabel asks Farlan, “So how was  _ your _ night?” 

“Couldn’t approach how exciting I’m sure yours was.”

“Oh, aye, nothing could possibly be more stimulating than watching Levi scowl and whine about your irresponsible fuckery for hours.”

Farlan counters, “Had to sleep on a couch,” and lifts his arms over his head, stretching his back out as if he’s still sore. 

“Does she know that ‘hard to get’ is your favorite trait?”

“Didn’t get a chance to tell her, as she was bein’ hard to get.” 

“Didja eat?” Isabel asks.

Farlan groans. His stomach growls. Isabel grins and tells him, “We stopped at a diner on the way.” She rubs her belly exposed by her white crop top. 

“Was gonna make myself some toast, but they don’t have beans. What’s the fecking point?”

“How?”

“These people have never even heard of beans on toast, Iz. This country is barbaric.”

“They didn’t have any tomatoes at the diner,” Isabel says in agreement. “The state of American breakfast is a fuckin’ disgrace. No wonder they’re all so backwards. How do you function startin’ a day like that?”

Levi makes another pass, at a forward canter this time. He makes it a point to look straight ahead and act like his friends don’t exist as they shout basic riding tips at him like he’s a child. Again, when he’s out of earshot, they return to a normal, resting volume and energy. Isabel pulls a stainless steel hip flask from the pocket of her shorts and takes a sip from it, then extends it to Farlan.

“On an empty stomach?” 

Isabel tilts her head and pulls her lips at him quizzically, like she never considered that to be a problem and it is news to her that it might be. Farlan frowns slightly for a tick, then shrugs, takes the flask, tilts his head back, and slowly empties it while Isabel begins to glare at him with each progressive gulp. 

“I didn’t mean all of it!” she starts to shriek. Farlan tilts his head back and holds her away at arm’s length until he’s finished every drop. 

When Levi comes back, in the reverse direction, at a slow collected trot, he notices them fighting over a flask - despite his best efforts to pretend they don’t exist - and he slows to a walk to tell them, “It is _ eight _ in the morning, please  _ spare _ me.”

Farlan flips him off with the hand that was holding Isabel, and tosses the flask into her as she falls forward with an ‘ _ oof _ ’. He tells her loudly while she’s stumbling to catch her flask and her balance, “Oh, look, Iz, someone’s too good to start the day with a nip anymore.”

“Grow up,” Levi snaps back, sitting back and stopping his horse in front of them. 

“Piss off,” Isabel says from the ground, “You used to be fun.”

“We are  _ on holiday _ ,” Farlan scolds Levi. 

The exasperation starts to creep into their friend’s even, monotone voice as he responds, “You can’t be on holiday at my fucking job.”

“Oi, speaking of, get back to it,” Farlan waves Levi off. “Go do a fuckin' jump.”

“Your crest release needs work,” Isabel shouts, falling back into criticizing his flawless riding ironically. 

“Square your shoulders,” Farlan piles on with her. 

“Tch.” Levi rides off again, shaking his head, while Isabel yells, “Keep your feckin hands together!”

Farlan turns around to face the source of the sound of hooves crunching on gravel behind them. He smiles at Erna, crossing the road on a dapple grey horse, and waves. When she’s closer, he says, “You look stunningly regal up on a horse, my princess.”

Ignoring the compliment completely, she tells him with a disgusted sneer, “You saw me fifteen minutes ago. In the barn. And this morning. You don’t have to, like, talk to me every time you see me.”

Isabel snickers at Farlan’s complete failure to win over the object of his affection, and he shoots her a severe look with narrowed eyes and a scowl that reads more like a pout. He doesn’t have a naturally intimidating face like Levi does. Erna rolls her eyes to herself, and clucks to her horse to ask it to move on and get her the fuck away from them. 

As she trots away, out of earshot, Farlan comments low to Isabel, “She’s got the arse of an angel.”

Isabel tilts her head and quirks her lips like she’s considering. “Eh.”

“Look at that light touch to the reins,” he swoons.

“I mean --” Isabel tries to chime in, but Farlan keeps fanboying.

“That perfect posture.”

Isabel rolls her eyes and sighs. “She is beauty, she is grace…” She punches him in the arm hard. “He was very fucked off about you staying out, by the way,” she informs him, nodding in the direction of Levi, as he rides a circle between perpendicular jumps. 

Farlan rubs his shoulder, wincing, then says, “Of course. I’d miss me, too.”

“You’re so dense.” When Farlan looks down at her, confused at her meaning, she says, “I mean, I think he’s jealous.” He blinks at her. She clarifies, “Because he thinks you slept together.” Farlan tilts his head. Isabel smacks her forehead with her palm and closes her eyes, and says, “Because he has a crush on her.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Farlan says quickly and completely unconcerned. “You could not be more wrong. Stop trying to start shit.”

“Well, yes, I can see why you would think that,” as that is exactly the kind of thing she not only would do, but has done before. “I’m just saying,” she holds up her hands defensively, as if all she can do is put it out there and then wash her hands of it, “He was quite a bit more fucked off this time than he has been any of the other times you have abandoned us to go home with a girl.”

“I’m not surprised. I’d be cranky if I’d been living here a couple weeks as well. That sun is unbearable.” Farlan squints up at the cloudless sky.

“You’re in denial.” Isabel goes back to watching her other friend ride and trying to think of something new to yell at him next time he gets close. 

“I’ll believe you when you come up with more solid evidence than a man who is perpetually fucked off seeming a slight bit more fucked off than usual.” As he’s finishing, Farlan is distracted by Erna, transitioning into a sitting trot. Her ass stays glued to the saddle without a single bounce and her shoulders stay still and square. He whistles. “It’s like she doesn’t have vertebrae.”

Isabel looks, nods after a moment of observation, “Okay, not bad.” Then Levi finally gets closer to them again and she shouts at him, “You’re on the wrong diagonal.”

Levi looks down quickly, to check that he’s posting and rising with the horse’s outside leg, and when he snaps back with, “What the fuck?” because she could not be more wrong, Isabel grins and sing-songs, “ _ Made you look _ .”

As Levi makes a groaning, growling noise to himself, Erwin walks up behind Isabel and Farlan, joining the pair on the grass, and he asks passive and calm, wary of offending friends of Levi’s, “Is this helpful?”

“If he can’t ignore us,” Isabel says, quickly, seeming to have practiced this answer before, “how is he supposed to ignore the distraction of a whole crowd at a competition?”

“Kenny used to ask us to do this,” Farlan smiles sadistically.

Erwin frowns with concern, but he supposes they're all adults. They seem like bright, sincere kids, despite the heckling. He tries to make small talk and asks them, “Are you both staying with Levi?”

The two of them nod and mutter, “Yep,” and look back to their friend starting to school his horse over a few jumps. Erwin frowns a little. He drove up this morning, after having spent the night at Mike’s place, and saw Farlan walking up to the barn with Erna, from the farmhouse. He’d been polite enough and introduced himself as Levi’s best friend, but curiously, Levi showed up almost an hour later, with the short, redheaded girl in the car with him. Erwin doesn’t know what to even begin to assume. 

“How has your stay been?” he asks politely.

“Well, I’ve got a black eye and a hangover already, so I’d call it a successful holiday,” Farlan says disingenuously.

“Mind yourself or you’ll get a second one,” Levi warns him with a growl as he rides past again. 

Erwin nods to Erna and asks, “Is she warmed up?” of the horse he asked her to ride. The horse that just came back yesterday from the man he leased her to, who says that she’s been consistently getting in too close to obstacles before taking off to jump. He asked Erwin to take the mare back for a couple weeks and see if he can train it out of her. He hasn't told Erna any of that, because, for one, she doesn’t need to know, and for another, she would be highly offended and tell him that she didn’t send that horse off that way and only shitty riding could ruin a horse she’s brought up and trained, etc.

He wouldn’t disagree with her, that’s not why he wants to avoid provoking her to rant. He just doesn’t need to hear it for the fifteenth time. However true it is, she doesn’t understand that you can’t just say that. You have to be diplomatic with people who are paying you thousands of dollars a month to lease a horse, and sometimes you have to take that horse back for free, give it a few good rides, and send it back without calling anyone a dumbass to their face.

While Erna’s talking to Erwin, Farlan interrupts Levi’s ride by shouting to him, “Oi, what would you say that line is? Four strides?” He’s pointing at the expanse of space between two parallel jumps, and asking how many running strides a horse would take between them.

“Five,” his friend drones tiredly at him.

“Sure?”

“I’ve ridden it.”

“Looks like you could do it in a four,” Farlan says, shading his eyes from the sun and squinting. 

“Obviously,” Levi says shortly, meaning that he could make it any distance, barring the physically impossible. He is an excellent rider. But it’s a well-spaced out five cantering strides between the two jumps that Farlan is talking about - a slow, easy six strides, or a fast, extended four. He doesn’t expect Farlan to know, because he never rides anymore, as that would interfere with all of the fucking around that he does, but maybe he could take Levi’s fucking word for it when he says it. 

Farlan looks to Erna, parked on her horse, relaxing in the shade, and he asks her quickly if she jumps, but she tilts her head at him. She has trouble understanding his accent… or she’s shrewdly pretending that she does for the sake of plausible deniability when it comes to being rude in front of her boss. Farlan’s smart about people, and quick to notice things like that and then act like he’s ignorant of them. 

Going over her head, figuratively, Farlan asks Erwin, “Do you think she could do that line in a four?” 

Erwin squints at him, and answers with neutral certainty, “Erna can get any distance.”

“How about three?”

Erna narrows her eyes, looking down at Farlan’s carefree, mischievous expression, and deadpans in her spartan-like way, “If he asks me to,” nodding toward Erwin. 

“Fascinating,” is Farlan’s response, leaving Erna confused as to what he was getting after in the first place. 

The woman he’d gotten pissed with last night - the one who kicked an unconscious man in the ribs - didn’t seem so fussed about rules and being proper or polite at work. Hell, since this morning, she’s worn canvas sneakers to do barn chores, spit on the ground at least four times, and called one of her coworkers a handicap to the collective human effort toward enlightenment before ripping an ear bud out of his ear. None of this diminished Farlan’s motivation or zeal to pursue her, of course, but it’s curious that of a sudden she’s politely feigning innocence and claiming not to understand his accent rather than straight out telling him to fuck off as she has several times already. In fact, she hasn’t cursed in more than five minutes.

Erwin goes back to conferring with Erna and tells her to take the horse over some jumps. She nods that she understands, and picks her reins up, shortening them and squeezing her legs around her horse, slowly collecting her own limbs and muscles and getting the horse under her in synchronous motion, transitioning from a working walk into a canter away from them. 

Farlan asks him, “Did you teach her to ride?”

Erwin shakes his head. Farlan smirks subtly. “But you’re very close?”

“She’s worked here a long time,” Erwin volunteers. 

“Clearly she respects your judgment,” Farlan presses, trying to test the deepness of this relationship that makes Erna suddenly stop cursing and spitting and acting like she was actually raised in a barn when the man’s around.

Erwin only hums absently. He doesn’t take his eyes off of his exercise rider cantering up to a meter tall vertical jump. His eyes track her approach. When she lands, he motions her over and raises a hand to Levi to let him know that the jumps are his again for a few minutes. Erna keeps her horse at a canter all the way to the edge of the field, hopping her to a stop directly in front of her boss before dropping her reins and her shoulders, and beginning to fan herself with her hand in the breezeless heat. 

Levi asks his horse to pick up a run, and, as if only coincidental, tracks a path toward the line of two jumps that Farlan had just been asking about. He and his horse run five perfectly spaced strides between them. Farlan smiles to himself as he watches his friend and listens to Erwin murmur to Erna a few feet away. 

“How does she feel?”

“Like a horse.” Erna shrugs before giving the animal a hearty pat on the neck. “Why?”

“Take her over something she might balk at.”

“What are you looking for,” Erna asks with a clear combination of suspicion and curiosity.

Instead of answering her question directly, Erwin points to a jump constructed out of natural brush, saying decisively, “Brush jump, then the wall if you can.”

Farlan pretends to watch Levi’s jumping, but allows himself a sideward glance quickly and catches Erna’s stormy blue eyes squinting angrily at the phrase, ‘ _ if you can _ .’ Her eyes immediately track to the stone wall jump bordered by tall, dry rose bushes, hiding wooden standards that hold white poles set at about four and a half feet tall. She waits in silence for his friend to finish his jumping course with a sour look on her face. Farlan turns to her casually, as if just thinking to speak to her, to ask, “Do you compete at all?”

She pulls a face and says, “No,” like he just asked her something terribly vulgar, which throws him off a bit, because he’d figured her for a competitive person. He’d been hopeful, even, because growing up with Levi has certainly taught him how to handle competitive types. He asks, with genuine curiosity, “Why not?”

She casts a weary look down on him and doesn’t answer. For a moment Farlan thinks she looks like she’s reached the end of her patience for being polite in front of her boss and is about to tell him to fuck off again. Instead, she seems to get distracted for a fraction of a second as she hears heavy, working hoofbeats come up behind her. Levi, having finished a flawless jumping course, slows his horse to a walk to stand and take advantage of the shade under the short line of trees to their left. Then she returns her attention with a whole new flavor of spite to her expression, and tells him, “I don’t need to compete. I don’t have to prove anything.”

Farlan smiles big as she trots off, knowing that comment wasn’t so much for him. He turns his grin to Levi who is clearly very aware of the same and glaring at the back of Erna’s head like he’d like to murder her, like he hates her, maybe even a little more than he tends to hate most people.

Farlan turns to Erwin and tells him off the cuff, “She’s got a lot of character.”

“This horse has more character in its nose, you dingbat,” Levi mutters.

Erwin nods slightly at Farlan’s statement. “She’s a good kid.”

“Incredible rider,” Farlan points out, detecting the older man’s chest enlarge a little at the statement.

Erna takes the first jump and the second, easily, though Farlan can tell that Erwin is expecting the horse to balk. He tells him, as she’s finished and walking back, “Y’know, some horses are too smart to act up with a good rider. They feel that leg position and they know to behave themselves.”

Erna takes Levi’s place in the shade as he wastes no time prodding his horse back to attention and getting back to work. She, in contrast, holds her reins by the buckle with only two fingers and lets her feet out of her stirrups so that her legs can hang while her horse catches its breath. 

Erwin asks her, “Ready for a real course?”

“Ready to pay me for a real training ride,” she snaps back, full of sarcasm. He looks at her like that was too far and unnecessarily mean and she sighs. “Fine. Yeah. What?”

When Erwin is finished listing off the order of the jumps he’d like her to ride, Farlan leaves Isabel and takes up position closer to Erna, to rub her horse’s neck and ask her while she waits her turn again, “Can I take you out without chaperones tonight?”

Matching sarcasm for sarcasm, Erna leans down and says quietly, seeming to not want her boss to hear, “Look,  _ friend _ ,” in a decidedly unfriendly tone, “I don’t buy your whole… innocent… respectful… white knight… thing…”

Farlan is undeterred and smiles genuinely. “So with the chaperones then?”

She glances to check that Levi’s still in the middle of jumping, and she says, with accusatory venom, “Look, I’m not a nice girl. I’d let you spend all your money taking me out to drink or eat or what the fuck ever - but how would you even do that? You don’t have a car. You're just trying to hang around me here, and I’m not about to go anywhere but very public places with your intensely creepy ass.”

“Bring the rifle, if you do,” Isabel recommends. Farlan whips his head around to give her a look like that was a betrayal. 

Erwin interrupts their banter by clearing his throat, which makes Erna snap to attention and see that Levi’s finished jumping. She takes up her reins and moves her horse on, making no effort to steer it away from shoving Farlan with its shoulder, but he sidesteps from its path easily, like he grew up surrounded by horses.

“She can be,” Erwin comments as she and Levi are passing each other, both out of earshot, “sort of…” he pauses in looking for the words to apologize for Erna and the way she is towards people. 

“I figure if I keep acting right, she’ll have to come around,” Farlan says easily. Erwin makes a slight smile. 

“You still won’t have a car, even if she does, you feckin corn kernel.” Isabel reminds him. 

“You have so little faith in me,” Farlan responds obviously, as if a car is a very easy thing to get, and like a whip he snaps his attention to Levi, who motions for Erwin to hand him his water bottle. “Oi, Levi.”

His target’s eyes slide toward him while he tilts his head back to gulp down his water. Having got his attention, Farlan inquires, “Do you think you could get three strides through that line?” He nods at the jumps they were talking about earlier. 

“Don’t be fuckin dim.”

Levi’s surliness doesn’t do anything to trip up Farlan, who says, “I’ll bet you the use of your car tonight that you can’t.”

“And why the fuck would I take that bet?” Levi chirps back at him.

“If you don’t think it’s possible, s’alright, just say so,” Farlan says dismissively.

Normally this isn’t the kind of cheap trick that would work on Levi. But Farlan’s already laid the groundwork for this particular cheap trick by getting Levi to say earlier that he could do it, and then praising Erna’s riding at least twice - not even saying that she is better than Levi, because that would be overtly manipulative of his friend’s competitive streak. Farlan, despite his seeming goofiness, is too smart to be overt, so he casually mentions, “Erna said she could do it in three. I don’t think it can be done, but far be it for me to call her a liar.”

As if on cue, Erna comes riding up, slowing her horse with gentle tugs at the bit, having little trouble as it’s been working hard and is starting to get winded. She’s humming a low, soft, exhortation to slow down and relax for a minute, when Levi whips his head around and asks, accusatorily, “You think you can get a three through that line?”

Erna looks back and forth for a moment as if stunned with the out of nowhere question, but she turns to look at the jumps Levi is pointing to, and then turns back to say, “On that horse?” she nods toward Levi, to the horse he’s riding, “Definitely. On this horse? Eh." She shrugs and wavers her hand. "Fifty-fifty.”

“Fair question,” Farlan steps in, positioning himself between the two riders. He looks to Levi. “If she can do it in three strides, to demonstrate that it can be done, will you then  _ consider _ betting me your car?”

Levi glares at his friend with his nose crinkled in disgust and annoyance. Then, finally, he asks, “For one night?”

“For now,” Farlan confirms.

“Fuck it. It’s not possible anyway,” Levi snarls. “What would I get?”

Farlan holds up his hand as if on his honor and says, “I will stay away from the farm until my flight home. I’ll be safely out of your way at the house every time you leave to ride.”

“Done,” Levi agrees too eagerly before his friend is fully finished speaking.

They both look to Erna. She, however, has already dropped her reins and is examining her fingernails, and ignoring the pair of them. After a beat of stillness, she looks up to see them waiting on her, and she informs them both disinterestedly, “I’m working right now, and I don’t work for you.” 

She looks over at Erwin who smiles, glad to be consulted before anyone does anything stupid. He thinks about how the horse she’s riding has supposedly been going hesitantly toward jumps, and could probably benefit from a fast, confident ride. He doesn’t see the harm in it for the horse, knowing that Erna wouldn’t do anything that would risk injury. Further, a little competition never hurt anyone. He tells her, “Go ahead and we’ll end on that.”

Erna turns her nose up like she is unbothered by the request. Farlan does what he always does when he’s been called on his bluff and is forced to leave things to chance rather than his own design. He crosses his fingers and does a quick prayer in his head. Then he starts thinking of ways he’ll argue Levi into a new bet if she turns out to not be as good as she says. 

Erna sits up tall in her stirrups, and says, “Fast, okay?” more for herself than for the horse who doesn’t understand her. It isn’t that the speed scares her. She spends most of her time restraining the horses and herself from going fast. The only thing that is making her heart pound is the nagging possibility of failing to do what she said she could. 

For someone with nothing to prove, she puts every detectable ounce of effort she has into getting three fast, long strides out of that horse after it lands from the first jump in the line, making it reach and extend and race for the sense of urgency she convinces it to feel - something a lot of horses don’t even feel with a full crowd cheering in the stands.

From her first landing, Levi feels a rock sink to the pit of his stomach. He’s got a good eye - better than others - and he already knows she’s got the reach and speed to make it barring anything catastrophic. Farlan counts out loud for him. “One, two, three.”

“Tch.” He was mostly counting on what he thought was her inevitable failure. 

As he watches, he wills the horse’s back hooves to rub the rail of the last jump so that he has a leg to stand on in calling it a half-failure, but the damn thing soars. Levi looks down to see Farlan grinning and realizes too late that he’s been conned for the two hundredth time by this bastard. It’s even more insulting this time as he’s sure Farlan is going to use the car to try to romance the girl whom he has very conflicted feelings over. On one level, she’s repulsive from the bottom of her dark soul to the tips of her fingers. On another, he felt a deep, corrosive, all-consuming jealousy when Farlan went home with her last night and was relieved when he overheard just now that nothing happened. And already he’s being tricked into willingly handing over the keys to his car so that his friend can give him fucking heart palpitations all over again. 

So, it’s with much importance that he tells the horse he’s riding, as he picks up a canter out in the other end of the grass field, “Do not fuck this up or I swear...” because it gets under his skin - the fact that she might be better than him. No one is better than him. No one has a right to be better than him - especially not her and especially if she isn’t going to do anything with that talent but hack horses and muck stalls. 

These thoughts distract him five strides out from the first jump and he isn’t set up for it the way he’d like. He’s thinking too much, and not simply letting muscle memory take over the way he should. His horse senses that something is ‘different’ and backs off his leg, losing its drive. He spurs it on with a growl and makes it extend its stride, but that gets him to the first jump faster than he intended from the outset. He’s forced to adjust at the last second and ask his horse to take off from further away than is ideal. It causes him to need to make up ground after the landing. 

Erna sits and watches feeling quietly smug about her accomplishment that she was only half sure she could actually pull off. When Levi doesn’t hit the first jump perfectly, she asks no one in particular, aloud, “Wait, is he not going to make it?”

She watches in disbelief as his horse takes its third stride and is too far to take the second jump, and she hisses, “Get up you motherfucker.”

The horse decides to ‘chip in’ one last short stride before collecting its hind legs and taking off for the second jump. It isn’t clear what Levi says from that far away, but it’s something short, emphatic, and angry. 

“What the fuck?” Erna says. “This is bullshit.” She crosses her arms atop her horse, angry that Farlan won the bet and angry that he made her complicit in it, helping him get a car so that he can offer to take her out when she thought it was clear that she could not be less interested. 

As he walks his horse over, Levi points at Farlan and says, “Not a fucking word!”

Unable to resist, Farlan goes, “Tough luck, mate.”

Levi’s nostrils flare. Then Erna says spitefully, “You fucking threw that on purpose.”

“Excuse your fucking self?” Levi says, slowly and incredulously, looking over at her in angry disbelief. 

Farlan and Isabel both laugh. When he can breathe, Farlan assures Erna, “If the prize for first place were a swift execution, Levi would still be fallin’ over himself trying to win,” which sets Isabel off on unbreathing peals of laughter all over again.

Levi lets go of his reins, starts taking his riding gloves off, and says, “I’m done for the day. Iz, take this horse.”

“Oh, do  _ I _ work here now?” Isabel quips, coming forward to take the horse’s reins as Levi dismounts and takes his helmet off.

“Make yourself fucking useful if you’re gonna talk shit all day,” Levi says, still bitter over those jumps and taking it out on everyone he can. “You know where the washroom is.”

“So when do you want me to pick you up?” Farlan beams up at Erna, clearly very pleased with himself.

Erna’s brow creases and she twists her face in a half-smile, half grimace. She looks to Erwin, and says softly, “Can I tell him to fuck off?”

Erwin shrugs. “It’s just dinner. How many times have you told me how much you love free food?”

Erna sighs, looks back to Farlan, lets her shoulders drop, and after some consideration, she says, “Seven-thirty?”

He finger guns at her and says, “It’s a date.”

She corrects him, “It’s dinner.”

Levi grabs Farlan by the collar of his shirt and physically turns him around, facing him away from Erna, toward the road. He growls at him, “Get to the fucking car.”

“Did you want to give me the keys now or…? Ow, fuck!”


	12. chapter sixteen

“leaving my last job - should i get something for dinner or settle with kraft?”

Erwin stares at the phone in the palm of his hand and stops himself from typing an automatic response to his boyfriend. He has to think about a few factors before deciding on an answer. 

A working horse farm isn’t something you just leave overnight. That’s why nearly every large farm has a manager who lives on site. Someone needs to be there to wake up in the middle of the night if a horse is colicking or worse. 

Erna is pretty reliable about staying in most nights. Erwin thinks she’s grown out of her hellraising days, though they aren’t far in the rearview mirror. For two years running, she’s been early to bed, early to rise, and no nonsense unless it’s on her single night off. Erwin reflects that it’s been fantastic for his relationship with Mike. For years, they could only spend the night together if Mike was willing to sneak over late and leave early, something he hated, saying that it’s demeaning, and would only tolerate once in a blue moon. 

Mike has been out of the closet to anyone who cared to ask for… for as long as Erwin can remember. He’s just always known. Not that anyone thinks to ask. The assumption about Mike is that he’s the quintessential definition of a cishet masculine man’s man. Mike can “pass” as straight without trying. He doesn’t try, though. He would much rather be openly, proudly, loudly affectionate with his boyfriend of nearly two decades, and Erwin’s comfort with the publicity of his sexuality has been an argument between them for all of that time. Erwin is hesitant to do anything that might make that old, easily sparked argument flare up. 

“Want to come over here for a change?” he texts back, wincing after he hits send, realizing Mike won’t believe that he only wants a change of scenery.

He considers texting Erna and asking when she’ll be back from her date with Farlan -  _ not a date. dinner. _ \- her voice says in his head.

“to be kicked out before sunrise?” Mike’s text interrupts Erwin’s thoughts. He holds the bridge of his nose, and bites his lip. 

“I want to see you.”

Anything direct and needy sounding speaks straight to Mike’s dick. It’s manipulative of him, but, as he explains to Mike once he opens the side door to the kitchen, it’s just that he did… does… want to see him, but he can’t get away from the farm tonight.

“You know, my problem isn’t with coming over here.”

“I know, it’s sneaking around about it.”

Mike frowns. Erwin’s heart sinks as he anticipates the start of the same old fight. Mike looks tired, covers his face with his hand, and then says with a heavy sigh, “You’re lucky that you’re sexy as all hell.”

  
  


\--------------

Erna, her dark hair down out of its ponytail, her face framed by fairy lights hanging from the trees shading the patio of a fancy restaurant overlooking the river, reaches to the middle of the table, and stabs a piece of shrimp with her fork. She brings it halfway to her mouth before stopping suddenly, flicking her wrist, and using her utensil to point at a table behind Farlan’s left shoulder. She says, “Those women for example. With the eyes and the smile and the accent, you could easily take either of them home. Probably both, honestly. I don’t mind, I can get an Uber.”

That’s a lie. She can’t get an Uber. She doesn't own a smartphone. But she can call Erwin in the middle of the night and ask him to come get her because it was his dumb idea that she go out to dinner with this perfectly nice, handsome man whom she doesn’t trust or like for no concrete reason that she can say. 

Farlan looks over his shoulder. Then says, smirking at her efforts to redirect his attention, “Ah, cheers for the vote of confidence.”

“Seriously, that accent is  _ hot _ ,” she says emphatically and with full candor. It feels good to finally express that after making a concerted effort to seem as if she thinks it’s horrible everytime she hears Levi speak. “It’s entirely unfair,” 

“Comes naturally,” he says, the Irish brogue as thick as ever, and gracious enough to not point out that she literally called it dumb the day before.

“It’s not gonna work though,” she says, before taking a bite of shrimp.

“Would be disappointing if that were all it took,” he answers casually, leaning back in his chair and folding his hands behind his head. Erna’s certain that he knows that’s the best way to show off his upper arm muscles, which are mouth-watering.

“You’re full of shit,” Erna responds bluntly as the waiter brings their entrees and offers Farlan a refill on his beer. When he declines, Erna takes it as a sign that he’s starting to believe her and is not trying to stay here any longer than he has to now that he knows he isn’t getting anywhere. She almost feels bad. She offers, “You’re like, objectively ridiculously attractive, but you’re full of shit.”

Farlan laughs with that playful shine in his beautiful, lime green eyes, and Erna fights the fluttery feeling she gets in her abdomen with all of her calloused heart, because despite objective handsomeness, she doesn’t trust a thing about him. “Okay. In what way am I full of shit?” he asks her. 

“Well,” she says, thinking about where to start. She plays with her fork, twirling it in her fingers, and decides on, “I’m pretty sure Ackerman put you up to this in the first place.”

He huffs a genuine, amused laugh that makes his nose crinkle and Erna hates how adorable and charming it is while he asks her, “And why would he do that now?”

Erna slowly lifts her chin and lowers her eyelids, casting the most suspicious glare on him. “I think you’re supposed to distract me so that I stop giving him a lot of shit about all the wrong things he does.”

“Sounds Shakespearean,” he says, in the bemused tone he uses in response to almost everything, so that she is unsure if he just knowingly made a clever joke. He seems just as likely to have done it by accident. While Erna’s wondering about him, he asks her, “You two don’t get along then?”

“He hates me,” Erna says readily, as if she’s okay with that, even though she’s still feeling the sting of rejection every moment that she slows down long enough to remember the disgusted look on his face when he realized she was trying to provoke him into a second unplanned and angry sexual encounter. That look will probably stay perfectly preserved in her memory for the rest of her life and make her cringe randomly at odd times long after she thinks it’s behind her. She looks past Farlan to a nearby waiter to try to make eye contact. She could use a drink suddenly.

“He's always been like that. He hates me and I’m his best mate.”

This unambiguous joke makes Erna smile. The waiter notices her and takes her request 

for a glass of red. She turns her attention back to Farlan and his Cheshire cat grin to gossip more about Levi. She relishes being able to tell someone who will commiserate, “He isn’t even that good.”

"Well I know that, and you know that, but try telling the rest of the show jumping world that he doesn’t shit golden eggs,” Farlan quips, equal parts honest and sarcastic. He arches an eyebrow at her and says, “You know, I was a better rider than him for one whole year.”

Erna blinks behind her wine glass. Farlan says, “It was when we were nine, but still.”

Erna smiles. She has to. Farlan is terribly clever and she doesn’t get much of that in her everyday conversations. She’d planned to keep the talk to a bare minimum throughout dinner so that she could gorge herself on free food and go home, but she smiles softly, decides it can’t hurt to be a little human toward this guy for a minute, and she asks him politely, “You said you grew up together?”

“I am shocked and hurt to learn that he didn’t speak of me at length already,” Farlan says with terrific sarcasm. 

“He doesn’t talk to me.” 

“Isabel and I were friends since birth.” Farlan explains. “Levi showed up when he was eight. We’ve been joined at the hip like ever since.”

Erna’s brow creases. “What does that mean? Showed up?”

Farlan shrugs mysteriously, and says, “He wasn’t there, and then one day, he was.”

Erna wonders if that’s why he has dual citizenship between Ireland and the states. She’s tried to find out already, but his wikipedia didn’t help her, and she’s much too proud to ask him and let on that she might give a single fuck about it. This would be a perfect opportunity to try to find out where he was born and why he emigrated, but she bites her tongue, not wanting to seem too interested.

He changes the subject on her. “He didn’t put me up to this, just for your information. Though you’re right that I am generally full of shit.”

“Obviously,” she agrees, but with a good natured smile. 

“But about you? Deadly serious. I’ve already planned the wedding.”

Erna rolls her eyes dismissively and turns her attention back to her food with a sarcastic, “Oh yeah?”

“Picked out the castle and everything.”

“If you knew anything about me, you’d know I’m not castle marriage material,” she says with a snide sneer at the audacity of inserting herself into a fairy princess wedding fantasy. 

“I know the important things.” He lists, “You clean up well --”

She interrupts him with, “This is the first time I’ve showered in the twenty-four hours you’ve been here.”

“You can ride like no one I’ve ever seen.”

She can’t help but smile. Erna will never tire of being complimented on her riding. 

He finishes with, “And you make my heart go all…” He taps the left side of his chest in an irregular beat. 

“You’re ridiculous.”

“Why is that ridiculous?”

Erna, feeling a little exasperation, drops her fork, looks upward, and blinks rapidly, sighing at being so put out as to have to explain while Farlan hangs on her every word with rapt attention. She starts with, “Men don’t want to date me. Sometimes, a man thinks he wants to date me, but then he realizes that I’m a complete trash bag. You’re just, like, slow to figure it out.” She takes a sip of her wine and adds, “I tried to help you, but you’re stubborn or in denial or just not very bright. I don’t know.”

He looks at her like that’s ridiculous and laughable. “How are you a trash bag?”

“Well,” she thinks for a moment about where to start. “I’m an alcoholic.”

“Not a thing where I’m from.”

This elicits a genuine, audible laugh from Erna, which even she has to admit to herself is no small feat with the aftershock of a begrudging smile. She presses forward anyway. “I’m a bitch.”

Farlan corrects her, “Strong, independent woman.”

Erna has to smirk. She wishes all men saw it that way. “I have no education, no prospects, and no goals or ambitions.” Which, is, ultimately, the heartbreaking truth and the deal breaker, to most people. But Farlan just shrugs. 

“I’m a compulsive gambling addict who relies on his mouth to get him out of trouble.”

“And fists,” Erna points out.

“I’m not perfect. Though I am ridiculously attractive as you pointed out. And I don’t want you to be anyone you’re not.”

“Who I am is garbage.”

“Maybe I love garbage.”

She rolls her eyes, looks tired, and tells him evenly, “You don’t have to, like, be romantic with me. You can just tell me you want to fuck me for a couple weeks and then leave. It’s not a big deal… or a dealbreaker.”

For the first time since she’s met him, he pauses. He doesn’t have an immediate quip or comeback. He looks troubled, thoughtful even, and Erna thinks she’s gotten through to him and made him realize what a mistake she is. Eventually, he asks, setting his chair straight and leaning over the table so that he can speak more softly. “Do you have a low opinion of all men? Or is it just me specifically?”

Without hesitation, she answers, “All of them.” Then she adds cheerfully, “But that  _ includes _ you.”

He nods slowly and thoughtfully. Then, suddenly returns to his usual cocky, carefree demeanor and says, “Well I won’t lie and tell you I’m one of the good ones.”

“I appreciate that.”

“But I think I would be good for you,” he says with a wink.

\-----------------------------

  
  


“You’re home!” Isabel says brightly when Farlan opens the door. She sits up on the back of the couch in the living area and leans back to get a view as he comes down the stairs and she, less excitedly, observes, “You’re alone,” droning, dramatically, to let him know that is very boring.

“Yeah, well,” Farlan trails off, his shoulders falling as he descends the spiral staircase. 

“That mean you lost our bet?”

“Fuck me,” he sighs as he hits the last step and is reminded of the bet he made with Isabel. He knew it was a bad idea. He jinxed himself out of getting lucky. He pulls out his wallet with a sigh and asks where Levi is. Even though it’s late, he’d be shocked if he was asleep. He’s never been the first to fall asleep. 

“He’s got some feelings, apparently. He’s working out about them.”

“What feelings is he working out?” He asks, pulling a fifty dollar bill from his wallet and handing it over because Isabel was right to think that he wouldn’t pull off a second sleepover in a row at Erna’s place. 

“No, he’s working out  _ about _ them. He’s been on the rowing machine for three hours.”

“Got it,” Farlan says, like that makes perfect sense. He points down the hallway to his left and says, “This way, then?”

Isabel nods, returning her eyes to the large tv screen dominating the far wall and watching trashy reality television with a large bowl of chex mix in her lap. Farlan creeps down the hallway and opens the door to the small home gym quietly with a, “Heyyy, Levi.”

The aggressive grunt he receives in response makes him feel more unsettled. Of all things in this world, the one thing he never wants is to be on Levi’s bad side, though he likes to tread the line close to it. He asks him carefully, “If my dating your barn manager was upsetting or inconvenient, you would tell me sincerely, right? I ask because you are my best mate and I care very much about your feelings… and also, because I’d like to keep my face, head, and spine all conjoined like.”

Levi doesn’t turn around or acknowledge Farlan, he keeps rowing, his back muscles rolling under a sweat-drenched tee. He doesn’t stop until Farlan says, “Iz thinks you’ve got feelings about it.”

Levi takes his bluetooth earbud out, turns around, and deadpans, “Do whatever you want,” before grabbing a nearby towel off a weightlifting bench and wiping his face.

Farlan tilts his head with concern. “I’d just really like to get your take on this before I proceed, since the last time we fancied the same girl, you beat the absolute shit out of me.”

“We were twelve.”

“It stuck with me!”

Levi takes a deep sigh. Then he says, seriously, “Farlan, she’s the fucking worst. Be the worst together. In fact, I’d be pleased as fuck if you could get her off that farm and whisk her away to a private and secluded island. Go forth and go fucking mad like you do, I could not give fewer fucks if I tried.”

“Appreciate it,” Farlan says, warily taking his friend at his world. “She doesn’t seem to want to be whisked anywhere. Horribly low self esteem and such. Easy to handle, but unexpected like.”

Levi’s legs flex as he rows, grunts, and says, “That’s nonsense.” He pulls the handle to his chest and pauses motion for a second to say, “She’s fucking full of herself.”

Farlan doesn’t say anything for a minute. He thinks about what Isabel said, she being generally the best judge of what’s going on in Levi’s head with an eerie accuracy. He puts together his friend’s surlier-than-usual attitude with his words and recent events, and then he says, with great pleasure, “You’re afraid that she rides better than you.”

“She… does… not,” he says, punctuating each vehement word with a deep breath and a grunt as he keeps rowing.

“You’re having a fucking crisis about it,” Farlan grins.

“Fuck  _ off _ , mate.”

“You’re lucky she doesn’t want to show Smith’s horses or you’d be out of a job,” Farlan teases.

“Shut the fuck up,” Levi warns him for his own good.

Farlan can’t help himself. “God forbid you experience some actual competition. I love it. I’ve never seen you like this.”

“I’m fucking fine, thanks for your concern.”

“Then you wouldn’t mind if I bought her a horse and sponsored her.”

“That’d be fantastic,” Levi says sarcastically. “You should do that.”

“For the pleasure of watching her kick your arse, I fucking will. Don’t test me.”

“I hope you do. Spend a million dollars. Import something from the fucking Germans. They’ve got the best horses.”

“I bet she can qualify to your level in six weeks.”

“Bet all you want. It won’t happen. Smith said she doesn’t even attend the shows.”

“You already asked,” Farlan observes with a raised eyebrow.

“Shut the fuck up.”

“Because you’re scared,” he says excitedly.

“Go to fucking bed, Farlan.”

\-----------------

Erna climbs the stairs slowly and quietly after getting home, heels in her hand, trying to be courteous and not wake anyone. Her effort is ruined when Eren surprises her at the top of the stairs and makes her let out a small shriek.

He smiles apologetically about startling her, but asks eagerly, “How was it?”

“It was dinner.”

“Where’d you go?”

She groans at his level of interest as she pushes past him to the kitchen. “Fancy thai restaurant that I can’t afford. I fuckin’ love thai food,” she laments, opening the fridge and placing the extra food she ordered to take home on a shelf. She closes the door, turns, and sees Eren’s expectant face in the dim light cast by the tiny bulb over the stove. She sighs. “What? I just want to wash my face and go to sleep. What do you want to know?”

“How can you not be excited?”

“About what?” she holds her hands out and makes a disgusted face, like there is literally nothing in her life to be excited about.

“He’s so handsome,” Eren moans. “And romantic… And the accent…”

“I  _ know _ .” Erna says, but with an entirely contrasting tone to Eren’s dreamy one.

“He wants to  _ marry _ you,” Eren says painfully like she’s stumbled into the perfect Cinderella story and is ungrateful about it.

“That’s not a thing to get excited about, Eren. It’s weird. And gross. And entitled. And heteronormative.” She squeezes past him and into the bathroom. She sighs bitterly at her face in the mirror while she listens to Eren retreating back to his room and tells herself that he’s naive to think so optimistically about it. Clearly neither he nor Farlan know her well enough to know that she’s fucking broken and gross and horrible. She can at least take pride in knowing that she’s gotten so much better at hiding it than she’d thought. 


	13. chapter seventeen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry I'm behind on my own posting schedule. my mental health hasn't been so healthy.

A heat wave comes in like a blanket from the west around midnight, pressing the atmosphere down with thick humidity and lifting the temperature hour by hour. The horses in the pastures graze closer and closer to each other, taking advantage of each others flicking tails for pest control as the heat emboldens the flies. In the barn, they lie down on the cool dirt of the stall floor and sleep. 

Mike wakes up soon after the shift in weather. He’s sensitive to changing air pressure thanks to his over-sensitive nose. More or less moisture in the air means a change in what he can smell, noticeable enough to wake him from a peaceful, fucked out sleep next to his boyfriend. He has a dim thought, behind his closed eyelids, that it smells like heat. He reaches for the remote to the window AC unit on the nightstand, turns it on, and immediately goes back to sleep. 

At three in the morning, Erna wakes up, sweaty and restless. Her sleep had been light and it was easily broken when the fan in her window became insufficient to cool the room. She let her eyelids flutter open because she was too distracted with wondering if going out with Farlan made Levi jealous, and why she wanted it that way, and what that meant anyway. Being still and trying to rest doesn’t do anything to quiet her mind, so, in the middle of the night, she sneaks up to the barn. She sees Mike’s truck parked in front of the house and smirks to herself. In the dark, she finds the box fans in storage in the hayloft, and she sets about zip tying them to the bars of each horse’s stall. 

Standing up on her tiptoes to spin the dial on the last fan, she smiles, proud of her work and her success at not thinking about Farlan or Levi or anything for at least a few hours. She finishes the morning feed before the others wake up, and then she goes back to the house for a change of clothes and a cup of coffee, only to sit down for ten minutes and then go right back up the path, to the barn, with her coworkers, at seven. 

Having climate control and a thermostat set to seventy, Levi and his friends miss any sign of the heat wave entirely until they step out the door. After her immersion in the heat and humidity for all of two forward steps, Isabel taps out and turns around to slip back inside the door that Levi’s just closing. 

“Are you not coming?” Levi deadpans

“This weather should be a state of emergency,” she shrieks from inside the darkened foyer. “I’m not going outdoors and you’re mad if you do.”

“Suit yourself,” Farlan says, eagerly running to the car to claim the front seat. 

  
  
  


Erna leans her tired body on the cool washing machine in the barn and licks the sweat pooling along her upper lip. It’s wetting her eyebrows, dripping down her thighs, and soaking through every piece of her clothing and making her wish she could trade her soul for a breeze. 

The temperature is already ninety degrees, out of nowhere, as weather is wont to do. It's normalcy doesn’t make her tolerate the sudden heat spells very well. She feels lightheaded every time she crouches to fasten a pair of splint boots and stands. That could have to do with the whole skipping breakfast thing. She doesn’t care. If she’s lucky, she’ll only have to work for a couple more hours and then she can take a cold shower and eat something, in that order.

She tells Armin to make sure to go check on the retired horses up on the plateau before noon - just to make sure they’re okay in the heat. She doesn’t worry about the babies or any of the young horses anymore. She did all kinds of worrying about them when she was younger, but she’s found that they’re bulletproof. Give ‘em clean water and food and nothing can touch them. 

She makes a list of extra chores to assign, like filling every water bucket and trough to the brim, checking the horses for heat exhaustion, and wetting down the chests of some of the more sensitive ones with cold water. She’s startled to see Farlan bound into the barn, being easily startled by anything unexpected on the quiet, isolated farm, and having definitely not expected him on such a disgusting day. “What are you doing here?” She asks him with irritated disbelief. “I don’t even want to be here.”

“I came to see you, of course, my beautiful flower.”

Erna pinches her sweaty eyebrows at him. “I’ve been rushing turnout and I’m about to half-ass the rest of the chores and fuck off. You wasted a trip.”

“Perfect,” he says, ignoring whatever part of that he didn’t want to hear, “I’ll take you to lunch when Levi’s done riding.”

“Riding?” she repeats. On cue, Levi walks in, saddle balanced on his hip, so she asks him, “How?”

He tilts his head at her as if she’s the strange one when he’s the guy about to work out in ninety degrees with ninety percent humidity. He says, “When I commit to ride, I ride every day.”

“Three hacks a day,” Farlan slaps him on the back jovially, “At minimum.” Levi cringes at the contact and shrugs his friend's hand away.

Farlan leans forward, placing his elbows on the washing machine, next to Erna’s list of heat-specific tasks. She rolls her eyes and looks past him to say something directly to Levi without cursing or being sarcastic for the first time in days, “You were serious about practice, I guess.” 

He narrows his eyes at her like that’s some kind of insult anyway. She has that affect on people, even when she’s trying to be neutral or nice, she has a resting bitch tone to her voice. “There’s a horse park over in Bucks that holds a schooling show every Thursday if you’re that serious.”

“He’ll do it.” Farlan says this as if he’s used to volunteering Levi for things. The shorter man shrugs stoically, like he’s used to it too. 

Levi looks to his left, out the open door, and squints at the sky. “Long as it doesn’t stay like this.”

Erna looks out the barn doors to the bright blue sky and she says, “It’s gonna rain later. Then the heat’ll break.”

“Forecast doesn’t call for rain.”

“Yeah, well,” Erna huffs, “Clouds,” irritated that he would dare to question her. Again. On literally everything, even the weather that she knows like the back of her calloused hand.

“You’re insane.” He pulls his phone out of the pocket of his breeches to check his weather app again. 

“See those clouds?” She points at a strip of vapor in the sky, lonely and thin. “They look like fish scales. That means it’s gonna rain in the next twenty-four hours.”

“The fuck are you on about?”

“It’s a thing,” she says, frustrated. There’s a rhyme that goes with it. Her riding trainer taught her when she was eleven. ‘Mackerel sky, never twenty-four hours dry,’ but not like she’s going to tell him that. “You could just trust me, since I’ve lived here my whole life and I know the weather patterns, but whatever.”

“I’m from where all the rain comes from. I know when it’s going to rain,” he calmly explains to her as if she’s an idiot. 

Farlan shrugs at her. “He’s not wrong.”

“Whatever,” she says in exasperation. “The ring’s all yours. I’m not riding and I canceled my lessons.” When she finishes her pronouncement, Eren comes in leading a sweaty horse behind him to be cold hosed and it makes Erna think to ask, “Who are you riding?”

“That,” Farlan says, full of importance, “is up to me.” 

Erna tilts her head at him while Levi dramatically rolls his eyes and says, “Starting with Fox, and then we’ll see,” before he walks away to tack up. 

“Why’s it up to you?” Erna asks Farlan, who is now picking up a dry erase marker and her small whiteboard. 

He writes something, then looks up at her as if he doesn’t understand her confusion. He explains, “I’m just here to give him an idea of who he works best with.”

“Speaking of which,” Levi shouts from a stall around the corner, “you could look at the conformation on this Oldenburg stallion and get to fucking work.”

Farlan writes something new and shouts back, “I  _ am _ working, and you know what I say about you and stallions.”

“I didn’t know you had, like, a purpose,” Erna says slowly, still skeptical of how serious he is about this or if it’s all a ruse. 

“I freelance,” he says, and Erna thinks that means he really is just a shiftless twenty-something man who rides the coattails of his well-off friend. But then he says, “I found Voxlann for the Cahill family," he pauses to try to remember, "Don't know, a few years back." 

Erna lowers her lids at him and says in a low, quietly skeptical manner, though guarded and wondering, "Five years ago…" because Jeremy Cahill is one of the names that is rightly on her radar, having won a few grand prix level competitions - with difficult course designs, not one of the fuck off classes for the bourgeois and untalented. 

Farlan's eyebrows squeeze together and he goes, "That long? Starting to age myself. Oh, you know that pop star's daughter? Aren't they from here? She just brought a horse I found for her to the Schultz farm in Amsterdam.”

Erna tilts her head at him. Those are big names. “So, you’re, like, just professionally good  _ at _ horses?” She asks skeptically, though she knows you can turn anything into a job if you find people willing to pay you for it, and there’s no shortage of things the wealthy people in this sport will pay for. 

“I’ve got a good eye.”   
  


“Uh-huh,” Erna murmurs dismissively before she asks loudly so that Levi will hear her from the barn aisle, “Is he for real?”

“Sadly, he is,” he deadpans back.

Farlan grins while he tells her, “It's honest work," with a shrug. "I help people find prospect horses for a twenty percent commission."

Erna takes a second to think of twenty percent of the average purchase price of a competitive grand prix horse. Even if he only does two jobs a year, he makes an easy six figure salary. This fact strikes her with a physical feeling of shock and revulsion and all she can say is, “Are you fucking serious?”

“Well… in addition to a consultation fee of twenty-grand,” Farlan shrugs. 

“Oh, that cheap?” Erna asks sarcastically. 

“But Levi,” he continues, rising in volume so that his friend can hear him around the corner, “gets my services for free and then disregards my advice completely, which makes us dead even.”

In response to what seems like an ongoing argument, Levi shouts back, just starting to let annoyance creep into his tone, “Look at the feckin horse.”

Farlan ignores him and asks Erna, “What height classes do they have at this schooling show? Will I get to see you ride?”

Erna tells him flatly, “I don’t do shows.”

Farlan gives her the same strange look everyone does, and has, and will, every time this comes up. Why doesn’t she compete? Naturally, anyone who rides well should want to compete at least once in a while, even just for the fun of it. He asks, “What if I sponsor you?”

“No thanks.”

“What if I paid you?”

“Nah.” 

“What if I found the perfect horse for you and then hired you to ride it for me?”

“The perfect horse, huh?” she says with theatrical sarcasm as if such a thing doesn't exist, and then she crosses her arms. “Why’s it so important to you?”

He shrugs innocently, as if to indicate he isn’t hiding anything, while choosing his words carefully like he definitely is hiding something, “I like to watch you ride?"

“Uh-huh.”

“He’s lost his mind and wants to put you up against me,” Levi says from Fox’s stall, before rolling the door open and leading the horse out into the aisle.

Farlan counters without denial, “I’m only trying to motivate you with a little competition.”

“She isn’t any competition,” Levi says flatly.

Erna says quietly that she’ll think about it, while picking up a lead rope. She won’t, actually, think about it. She hasn’t been to watch or compete in a horse show since she was a teen and she is wholly committed to keeping it that way. 

Farlan’s eyes sparkle, and he gives Erna a quick wink and follows after Levi. She returns to her work and clips her rope to a horse’s halter, while she hears Farlan say, “You know you can’t ride stallions. You’re all too hot headed and stubborn. Bad combination.”

Erna rubs a horse’s nose as she walks it out of its stall and tells it quietly, “He should meet some of our mares.” Hotheaded and stubborn would describe most of them to a T and she wouldn’t have it any other way. The chestnut-colored mare next to her agrees with a flip of her head and her silky forelock. Erna escorts her to an empty paddock, opens the gate, walks her through, lets her go, closes the gate, in rote, mechanical, precise order. She drops the lead rope on the fence so that she can use it again when she comes back in fifteen minutes, and she hurries to go back inside and start cleaning the water buckets. 

She struggles to take a big, deep breath of air in this humidity. Every horse in the barn is sweating, even with box fans zip-tied to their stall doors and set on high. When she gets inside, she goes straight to an empty stall and stands in front of the fan set there, curling her lip in disgust and finger-combing frizzy, sweaty, curly flyaway hairs away from her forehead. Eren walks in the stall with the horse that belongs to it without noticing her until he’s unclipping his leadrope and looks up to see her still soaking up the breeze of the fan. “You okay?”

“Hot,” Erna groans. She doesn’t do well in the heat. She doesn't have any patience or love for any weather above seventy-five fahrenheit. 

“Are you sure we can’t ride?”

They both exit the stall to let the horse have some peace, and in the aisle, Erna tells him, “It is too hot to ride. Horses are heat sensitive. I don’t want to end my day by giving any of them an alcohol rubdown so that they don’t fucking die. So, no. We can’t ride.”

“B-”   
  


“If you’re about to say, ‘But,’ I will fucking  _ murder _ you,” she hisses at him low and slow, hating him for even having the heat endurance to think about riding right now. “I already canceled all my lessons. Nobody is riding. It’ll rain later, the heat will break, and then life can resume as fucking usual.”

“It’s not gonna rain,” Levi’s thickly accented voice drones as he brings Fox back inside after a ten minute hack, covered in sweat. He gives Eren an imperious look when he doesn’t automatically jump to take his horse from him. Erna sneers at him, openly, because Erwin isn’t there to scold her, and because Levi has no right to expect Eren to know what he expects from him. He’s inconsistent as fuck and just expects the poor, inexperienced kid to read his mind. 

As the nervously eager to please groom takes Fox’s reins, she tells him, “Walk him for ten minutes then hose him with cold-ish water starting with his legs.” Those are only the beginning of her instructions, because making sure that a horse is properly cooled out in weather like this is a whole process. Depending on the horse and how hard they’re worked it can take hours to get them back down to a safe body temperature. Absolutely irate about the extra work that she hadn’t expected, she glares at Levi and asks him, “How many horses are we gonna have to cool out?”

Levi shrugs a shoulder minutely, carelessly. He nods his head toward Farlan and says, “Gonna ride until he sees something worth taking through the level fives.”

“Okay,” she says, doing nothing to hide the irritation from her voice, “Can I help you whittle that list down at all? We only get paid to work until noon and I don’t want to be here cooling out horses off hours.”

Levi rolls his eyes as if she’s making a big deal out of nothing. He inhales, and is about to respond, when Farlan gives him a half/shove, half/pat on the back and asks him if he could go up to the house and ask Erwin for a glass of ice water. Levi turns and gives him a death glare. Farlan holds his hands up defensively, though clearly disingenuous, and says, “I’m dehydrated? What?”

“If you didn’t start the morning with Bailey’s, then you wouldn’t be. You can drink from the spigot.”

Erna warns him with sadistic pleasure, “Just don’t drink from the hose. I’m pretty sure there are spiders living in it.”

“Levi, please,” Farlan asks, completely calm and cool and serene. To Erna’s surprise, the surly star equestrian, after a moment of intransigence, sighs a small huff of breath and walks off toward the house. 

Eren starts walking Fox up and down the aisle of the barn so that he can catch his breath, and Farlan stands there innocently staring at Erna until Levi is out of earshot and he can say, “Right, now then, I’m going to describe what I’m looking for and I have a feeling you can save me from watching him hack everything in this barn.”

“Shoot.”

“Assuming they can all jump," he says, to which Erna nods emphatically. "He needs a horse with a serious work ethic. More importantly, something non-reactive. Levi can ride anything, but what he needs is to be able to lose his temper without it being taken personal.”

Erna stands there for a moment, then tilts her head, and goes, “Huh.”

“What?”

“It’s just… I just assumed that you’re a smooth talking idiot who doesn’t know what he’s saying as much as how to say it, but that’s actually, like, a really good assessment.”

“Well, cheers, I think,” he says to the backhanded compliment. 

Erna reaches and takes back the small whiteboard that he stole from her in the washroom earlier. She wipes it off with her shirt, dampening it with sweat before writing down two names. She deliberates, pursing her lips to one side and another, trying to decide whether to add a third name. She has three horses she would like to see Levi on, none of which are the ones he’s seemed to prefer the past couple weeks, but she’d also like to get the fuck out of here five minutes ago. She stops her list at the two names, one of which she hates to volunteer, because she thinks Remy, the Selle Francais gelding that she loves, is too good for Levi. Remy deserves a better human than him.

Farlan raises his eyebrows when she hands it back to him. “That it?”

“Most of these horses won't put up with childish shit. It’s what I like about them. They aren’t machines that you can push a button and make them go.”

That makes him smile mischievously. She wonders what he’s about to say about that when their conversation is interrupted by a roar.

“THE ABSOLUTE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?”

Erna can hear Levi bellow at Eren clearly from all the way down the other end of the long barn aisle, and she runs. She doesn’t stop to think or process. She runs and she winces as Levi rips a bucket out of Eren’s hands and throws it viciously to the floor, splashing water everywhere, startling Fox, making him fly back and prance nearly out of Eren’s hands. 

“ARE YOU TRYING TO KILL THIS HORSE?”

He raises a hand to Eren, but Erna reaches them and is quick to grab the reins and use all of her strength to pull the big grey stallion between them with an urgent tug. Eren gets shoved out of the way by Fox’s shoulder, but he’s saved from a backhand across the face. With her adrenaline pumping and her maternal instinct flaring, Erna squares her shoulders, ignores the spooked horse dancing on the end of the reins in her hand, and tells Levi, “You don’t touch my fucking stablehands.”

“Yeah, well your fucking stablehand was about to drop this five hundred grand horse dead in the middle of your fucking aisle, if you cared to notice.”

Erna growls with her teeth bared, “I will take care of it.”

He grumbles something that she doesn't catch clearly and Farlan swoops in to grab him by his elbow and steer him away, wrenching him by his arm and tugging him with great force. With a good-natured smile, he pulls his friend along and says, “What about this horse next?”

Levi throws Farlan off and delivers a swift punch to his gut that makes him buckle, and only then does he allow himself to be handled and led out of range by his friend holding his abdomen. Erna takes a deep breath and looks around at the spilled water, the spooked horse, and Eren leaning against the wall. His lip quivers and he says that he’s sorry. Erna presses her lips together tight. 

She motions for him to come over while she presses a hand to Fox’s sweat-slick chest and feels his heaving breath. “Don’t apologize to me, and definitely don’t apologize to that asshole.” She gives Fox a big, loud pat on the neck and says, “You can apologize to this guy if you want.” Removing her hand from the horse’s chest, she runs it along his shoulder and barrel, to rest on his flank and feel again how fast his breathing is. “But I don’t think he even knows you did anything wrong."

“What did I do?” he asks with a tremble in his voice that breaks her heart. 

Erna feels guilt start to eat at her while she tells herself that this is her fault because she’s been too lazy to take the time to see how much Eren knows or to train him in what he should know. She looks at the black 5 gallon water bucket on its side on the floor, and she says, “Never give a hot horse cold water.”

“Why not?”

“Can kill them,” Erna hates to inform him, especially because Levi was right. This new piece of information makes Eren let out a woeful sob so that Erna holds her hands up and says, “Oh, no no no, it’s okay. I mean, looking at how much water is on the floor, it doesn’t look like he drank a lot.”

Eren shakes his head. She can tell that he’s holding his breath so that he won’t break down in full tears. She reaches and puts a hand on his shoulder, something apparently just as deeply uncomfortable for him as it is for her. They both pull similarly awkward faces before she retracts her hand quickly and says, “Look, we’re gonna keep him walking and he's gonna be fine.”

Moving helps Eren calm down and once he and Erna are outside, heading down the driveway, even further away from Levi, he’s able to breathe and say, “I’m so sorry.”

“You didn’t know. It’s not like you were trying to hurt him.”

“I’m sorry, Fox.”

Erna smiles. “He’s a big pain in my ass, which means he's gonna be just fucking fine. Only the good horses ever get hurt. Besides, Armin’s practically a vet. If anything, this is just a good opportunity for him to practice sticking a thermometer up a horse’s ass.”

Fox pushes his nose sharply into Erna’s upper arm and makes it seem like he takes issue with that, but Erna knows it’s just a coincidental nose itch. Eren catches the opportunity for anthropomorphization and laughs. 

“Do you really think he’s gonna be okay?”

“I would never lie to you, Eren.”

They walk a bit further before Eren says, “You’ve already lied about… like a lot…”

She rolls her eyes. “Well not about a horse.”

“Oh, okay, yeah, fair.”

“It’s gonna take some walking and then hosing him with warm water, then cold water, then we put a cooler sheet on him, and it’s a whole thing. But… You aren’t the first to think that a hot horse would love a cold drink. It happens. It's not great but it's survivable. Horses aren't as delicate as most people think.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t know.”

Erna shakes her head. She doesn’t tolerate sorrys very well. She can’t tell him it’s okay. Instead she says, “Didn’t you ever read Black Beauty?”

“No.”

“Watch the movie?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You’d remember. It’s traumatic.”

“What happens?”

“Well… this… for one thing.” 

After Eren groans again, they walk in silence, up and down the driveway, Erna stopping every so often to check Fox’s breathing and body temperature and taking the time to show Eren how she does everything and why. For the first time she feels like he listens to her attentively. Nothing like nearly killing a half-million dollar animal to put a charge in someone’s ass, Erna thinks. 

When it feels like they’ve walked a mile in the heat Erna says that’s probably enough to be out of the woods, and they can go back to the washroom to hose Fox down. Eren seems to finally exhale and relax a little bit. She turns Fox around again, Eren follows, and matching her step for step, easy with his longer legs, he asks haltingly, “If I was… If I was wrong - I mean - if I did the wrong thing… why did you stand up for me?”

“Why’s that surprising?” Erna asks flatly, though she knows. She’s being obtuse on purpose so that she won’t have to give a genuine and sincere answer.

“Well, usually you yell at me.”

“You were already being yelled at.” Inside the barn, she spots Armin topping water buckets off and calls him over. She briefs him and asks him to help Eren hose down Fox before walking him out some more. 

She rolls her dead tired shoulders and cracks her neck as she leaves them and walks through the dark barn, out into the light again, and then to the indoor arena. Farlan is watching Levi exercise the first horse she recommended from the doorway. He seems to sense her walk up beside him, and he says, “Sorry about that.”

Erna only grunts in response. She looks over her shoulder and past the barn, scanning the landscape for any sign of Erwin. When she feels sure that he’s still in the house with his air conditioning, she cups her hand to her mouth and yells, “Hey,” at Levi, trotting a circle at the other end of the ring.

He doesn’t slow down to a walk. He canters his mount over to her and stops abruptly, obviously not ashamed or apologetic, which makes Erna’s nostrils flare, and with no preamble, she tells him, “You are going to apologize to that kid.”

He scoffs at her. 

“You are going to apologize to that kid,” she says again, more severely, “who fucking worships you, even though you’re a piece of shit with no control, or humility, or grace.”

He inhales sharply, and is clearly about to say something, but she will not be interrupted. She tells him, “You will apologize to that kid, because he earns less than eight bucks an hour, because he tries hard despite that, and because he’s your show groom and you’re going to be stuck with him for a year or until he quits. Because if you don’t tell him that it’s okay and that you don’t hate him, he’s going to be so nervous around you that he’s going to fuck everything up more than usual, if you can even imagine what that would be like.”

Levi doesn't answer right away. He stares her down, his jaw clenched tightly. Erna mentally gathers her next arsenal of arguments and complaints, but suddenly, he drops his horse’s reins, dismounts, and says, “Stay here." He shoves the reins at her, almost hitting her in the chest with them balled in his fist. She rolls her eyes at his childishness, crosses her arms, and watches him stalk off toward the barn. 

“That was beautiful. Are there laws about murdering a man like that here? In broad daylight and all?”

She smiles and then Farlan tells her, “He’s done with this one. I’m not sold.” He pats the black gelding on his nose. “You’re a good man, though,” he tells the horse with the kind of casual affection Erna only sees in people like her who have handled hundreds and hundreds of horses. All horses are good, some are exceptionally good, some are phenomenal, but it’s hard to get excited about any of them when you’ve met so, so many.

“Try Remy,” Erna says, “but I think he’s too much of a gentleman for that shithead.”

“Could be a good influence,” Farlan responds. “If not, we’ll just lease something. Don’t a lot of USET members keep barns around here?”

“Three of them. Anna Kranick keeps her horses just over in the next town. She’s the best to work with. Bring Erwin if you go look at anything. She loves him.”

“Would you be wanting to go?”

“Not today,” she says carelessly, squinting up at the harsh bright blue sky. “It’s gonna rain. Besides, work’s not done, it’s almost noon, and I need a nap.”

“Ah, lost sleep thinking about me," he says as a statement, not a question.

Erna elbows him. It’s unintentional that her elbow hits him right where Levi punched him previously and he hisses a sharp breath. She winces for him and gives him an apologetic look. Meanwhile, Levi comes back out of the barn, looking no less angry. He darkens Erna’s mood and they scowl at each other when he walks up to take his horse back. 

There are so many things she’d like to say to him about sportsmanship and behaving with a little class, and not like a spoiled, narcissistic brat, but she’s already won one victory. She feels it would be wise to stop there. 

She does tell him, before he goes to mount up again, “You can cool out your own horses. It’s noon. We’re gonna throw hay out and quit for the day. If you don’t like it, talk to Erwin.”

She retreats to the barn, feeling his glare chasing her back. Farlan hurries after her while Levi shouts an “Oi!” at him, but Farlan ignores him completely. “Can I take you out again later, my glowing moonbeam?”

“I don’t feel bad about making you waste your money, now that I know you’re fucking loaded, but I’m exhausted. So no.” 

“Of course you are,” he says sympathetically, “You work too hard. Let me finish up here, you go rest.”

Erna stops next to the four meter high stack of hay bales underneath the cutaway to the hayloft above, turns to face him with a hand on her hip, and sighs. “I still have to train Eren. He’s not ready to groom at a schooling show as early as next week.”

“I can do all of that for you.” He smiles confidently.

Erna looks at him blankly for a second, then points at her own face and says, “Can you see how skeptical I am? I can’t even tell.”

“Please,” he says, exhorting Erna to trust him. “I’ve done everything. I’ve been a show groom. More importantly, I’ve groomed for Levi. I can teach your kid all his particulars… of which there are many.”

“That would…” Erna’s brows knit in confusion as she says carefully, “That would be amazing.”

“What?” He asks, at her obvious reticence and mistrust of the situation. 

“Seems too good to be true.” She doesn’t like the whole idea, but there’s only one chore left to be done and it isn’t something terribly important or easy to fuck up. 

“Well that’s me,” he smiles. “You’ll have to get used to it.”

“We’ll see.” She rolls her eyes and turns to exit out the side door of the barn, to make the shortest path to her house. Her clothes stick to her skin, soaked with sweat that won’t evaporate in this humidity, and her head pounding with a sinus headache from the pressure in the air. 

Just as Farlan bends down to pick up a section of hay to throw to some horses, Levi comes back to loom over him and tell him, “You’re a fucking loon.” When Farlan ignores him to throw the hay he’s holding over the side of a stall door for a knickering horse, he says, “Are you doing barn chores?”

“Trying to get my future wife accustomed to being pampered.”

“You’re such a twat.”

“I am in love.”

“I can’t even tell if you’re really keen on her or if you’re doing this to be purposefully ridiculous.”

Farlan stops to hand-feed the horse next to Levi a small bunch of hay as the whole barn gets louder and more restless at the scent of food. He gives the horse a pat on the neck, and, ignoring Levi’s statement completely, he says, “If I don’t like the next one for you, what do you think about going over to Anna Kranick’s barn?”

Levi shakes his head at his friend’s unwillingness to engage on the question of whether his crush is all an act, but he shrugs and says, “She’s got some good horses.”

“I’m thinking about buying one,” his friend says, tossing another hay section over another horse’s stall door. “Like a souvenir.”

“You don’t even ride anymore.”

“It’s an investment.”

“So you flip horses now?”

“Couldn’t hurt to start a side hustle.”

Levi eyes him suspiciously. “I don’t know what you’re planning, but I don’t like it.”

“You don’t like anything.” Farlan smiles at his friend. “That’s why we complement each other so well.”


	14. chapter eighteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> this is unedited, I'm uploading it from a tablet, there's a global pandemic, horse show season is canceled, yadda yadda yadda, here's some fic

When only one set of footsteps stomps down the spiral staircase to the clean, cool, air conditioned living room where she has been lazily watching tv all afternoon, Isabel turns her head with eager curiosity. When Levi’s boots emerge on the bottom step without Farlan following him, she says, in a weak, apathetic whine, “Oh nooooo, you killed him.”

“I wish that were the fuckin’ case,” her sweaty, black-haired friend nearly shouts, throwing his riding helmet at the corner of the room with a loud crash. Isabel grins wide and blinks rapidly, rising to her knees and turning around on the couch. 

“Fancy tellin' me how you really feel then?”

“Don’t give a single fuck.” 

Isabel’s grin grows wider. She follows him with her eyes as he goes over to the kitchen and rips the fridge door open. She sings, “You liiiiiike her.”

He does not shout a denial. That would be a rookie move. With a practiced, deadpan, straight-man face, he turns around unhurriedly and asks, “Who?”

“Please,” she rolls her eyes. “Don’t act like you’re smarter than me. You’re not.”

She’s right. He sighs. “Maybe,” he conjectures, snapping the tab off of a can of beer from the twenty-four pack he bought on expectation of the arrival of his alcoholic friends, “I am rebounding.”

“From what? You broke up with Mary a year ago.”

“Was that a year already?”

“Aye, they just fly by like.”

Levi leans on the counter. They do fly by when you’re as busy as he is and travel as much as he does. He admits that might have had something to do with the breakup. Isabel raises an eyebrow at him and asks, “Are you not gonna offer me one?”

He holds his hands out in disbelief at her. “You’ve been here all fecking day while I’ve been working double, riding and trying to keep Farlan from making any life-ruining decisions, which is meant to be your job. If you wanted a pint you could have, at any time, gotten one, just like you could get up off your lazy arse right now, march the five meters to the fridge, and act like you've got a working central nervous system.”

Isabel, with a put upon, heaving sigh much larger than her pixie-small frame, hops over the back of the couch. She swipes at him on her way to the fridge, slapping his shoulder with the back of her bony, little hand, and tells him, “You’re bein’ a cunt.”

“My deepest apologies, your royal highness.”

Isabel rounds the kitchen island to lean on her elbows across from Levi, mirroring him and his sarcastic face mockingly. She takes a long sip, then returns her face to normal, and says, “I hated Mary.”

“Aye, well, that didn’t help.”

“She had that ‘too Irish’ face.”

“The fuck does that mean?” Levi asks, shaking his head in disbelief.

“You knooow,” Isabel drawls. “With the blonde hair and the no-chin and the up-nose.” She pushes the tip of her nose up with her finger, and says through her sinuses, “like a pig.”

Levi smirks. “You’re already pissed.”

“I had a few. What?”

“She was fit,” he sighs, remembering his ex’s tight, toned body and bright blonde hair, and her sickening amount of charm. He snaps out of it and tells Isabel, “And I think that may be racist.”

“Impossible,” she scoffs. “I didn’t even say anything about her small teeth.”

Levi holds his thumb and pointer finger a centimeter apart and says, “A little.”

“Anywaaaayyy,” she drawls slowly while rolling her eyes at him. She perks up visibly and asks, “What’s gonna happen? Are you gonna fight about her like you did with Alexandra?”

“We were twelve!”

“Do you hafta kill Farlan now? Do we bury him here or at home?”

“Not picking up a shovel for that bastard. Viking funeral,” Levi drones between large gulps of his beer.

“Why don’t you just try talking to’im?”

“Because fuckin’ look at him?! He’s been here two nights and he’s managed to take her on, what, three dates? And I don’t even like that psychotic -”

Isabel warns him, “Don’t.”

He pauses, and says, “... cunt.” That satisfies Isabel, who has a thing about men calling women bitches, which is the epithet that she rightly expected was coming. He reiterates, “I can’t stand her. I hope she does run the fuck off with him. Make my life simpler.”

“That obviously isn't gonna happen.”

“What makes you so sure?” Levi asks her skeptically, because he’s never seen a woman resist Farlan. He’s only seen them get sucked in by him and then - when he feels he has them, unequivocally, irrevocably, hopelessly in love - they’re cast aside. It’s instant. And it isn’t even planned. Farlan isn’t that dark. He’s just an enthusiastic idiot who only wants anything he can’t have. 

“Because I know how women think?”

“Do you?” Levi raises a sarcastic eyebrow at her. “Where’d you learn that?” he asks, because he has never known her to have a girlfriend. She’s been surrounded by five brothers plus him and Farlan her whole life.

“Shut the fuck up. Has it even occurred to you that she is obviously leading him on to make you jealous? We only spent fifteen minutes with her yesterday and she was eye-fucking you the whole time. I would have drawn attention to it, but figured that you were aware and just put off. You’re never  _ that _ oblivious.”

“No, I noticed. It’s just that you’re wrong. She was  _ murdering _ me with her eyes because she tried to get a ride out of me earlier in the day and I told her to fuck off. I think I called her disgusting.”

“I’m so confused.”

“It’s been a whole… thing…” Levi waves his hand dismissively, not wanting to explain the absolute soap opera that his life has been since settling here to his curious friend.

“Look,” he says seriously, setting his empty beer can on the counter. “We did fuck, but that doesn’t make you right. I can fuck someone and not like them.”

Isabel’s brows fly up and she shouts excitedly, “When?!”

“Somewhere in between when I told you that she wasn’t interested in me, and now.”

“Was it bad?”

“I blacked out.”

Isabel raises her eyebrows and keeps them raised as she slowly sips her beer. Levi cards his hands into his hair and faces the granite countertop. Isabel finally comments, “I can't...Do you… Is that supposed to mean it was good? Because you seem to hate each other, a lot.”

“Can’t argue.” Levi groans. “It was good enough that she wanted me to go again right before I left to pick you up from the airport, after treating me like a fucking predator for a week.”

Isabel smiles wide, hops in place slightly with her excitement, and squeals. She tells him with evil glee, “I love this! Why didn’t you?”

“Because what even is that?! I invite her here for a proper ride and she tells me to get fucked. I treat her like the fucking bitch that she’s being - sorry.”

“No, it’s alright for this.”

“- and she tries to ride me in the viewing room of the indoor.”

“Never fucked anyone in an indoor,” Isabel comments.

“No,” Levi agrees, “Because it’s fucking insane.”

“Well, I like her.”

“Yeah,” Levi scoffs at his friend. “ _ Now _ you do.”

“She’s not boring. Your type is always so boring.”

“Why don’t you take a run at her then?”

Isabel doesn’t snap back with anything right away and Levi lifts his face to see her looking like she’s actually thinking about it. He tells her, “Stop.”

“Fine, I won’t steal your girlfriend. Would be too easy anyway.”

“Don’t tell Farlan any of this, right?”

“Of course not,” she says. “That would ruin the whole thing. Now tell me everything.”

  
  
  


…………………………………………………………………………………….

  
  


In the living room of the farmhouse, Farlan’s ears start ringing and he straightens up from his slouched position on the oatmeal beige carpet where he’s been teaching Eren how to take a bridle apart, clean each piece, and put it back together. He cups a palm over an ear and presses, then releases, and winces when the ringing won’t stop. Eren looks up and asks him what’s wrong.

“Nothin. Either tinnitus or Levi and Iz talking about me again. Likely the latter.” He points at Eren’s hands and reminds him, “The noseband goes to the inside of the crownpiece.”

“Shoot,” the kid hisses as he looks back down at what he’s working on. Farlan’s shown him how to do this several times already and now he’s attempting it completely on his own for the first time. 

Farlan reminds him, “You’re doin’ alright.” He turns to his left, where Mikasa and Armin are sitting on the couch, browsing their phones. His brow creases at their disinterest in the lesson in front of them, and he asks, “Is this all you do all day?”

“Nothing to do around here,” the girl drones at him without looking up.

Farlan’s of the mind that only boring people get bored, but he’s far too polite to say so. Armin looks up, as if just waking up, blinking from the blue light of his phone. “Can we change the channel yet?”

“No,” Farlan tells him. 

“But you’re not even -” 

Farlan knows he’s not even watching the ninety-minute long youtube video of the Longines Qualifiers in Portugal streaming to the small flatscreen tv set on a coffee table against the far wall. He tells Armin, “It’s for osmosis.”

“But he’s not -”

“Eren,” Farlan interrupts. “How many strides has each rider gotten between the first oxer to the liverpool?”

“Seven,” their friend says, without needing to think on it.

Armin, astonished, says, “You haven’t even been watching it.”

“Everyone learns differently,” Farlan tells the blond while Eren stays focused on the bridle he’s still attempting to put back together. He pulls at the collar of his shirt and attempts to air out some sweat. He isn’t sure if the open windows are helping or hurting the temperature in the house. He thinks it’d be just as well to close them and at least keep the suffocating humidity outside. 

“When did you learn to do this?” Eren asks him as he moves on to attaching the bit to the two cheekpieces at the bridle's sides. 

“Think we were seven,” Farlan remembers. “Kenny used to give Iz and I each a bridle and make us race each other in taking it apart and putting it back together.”

“That’s Levi’s uncle?”

“Aye.” Farlan says, then mutters, “mean old bastard,” automatically, under his breath, like an oath to a vengeful god. 

Eren puts the piece he’s working on in his lap and asks wide-eyed, “What was it like growing up with him?”

Mikasa rolls her eyes from the couch and then sighs sarcastically, swooning, “Oh Levi…”

Farlan and Armin laugh while Eren slaps Mikasa's calf with a braided leather rein. She scowls and raises a hand at him. Eren flinches in anticipation, but Mikasa smiles, showing she never intended to hit him. Suddenly brave, Eren childishly smacks her knee, and before they can really start roughhousing, Farlan holds up his hands in a halt motion and says, “I’ll tell you if you quit fuckin’ around and get back to it.”

Eren inhales sharply and ignores Mikasa’s last poke at his shoulder, turning to Farlan with rapt attention and perfectly obsequious obedience. With a smirk, Farlan tells him, “Eyes on your work.”

His student looks back down and goes back to struggling with the difficult closures on the ends of the twin cheekpieces. Farlan’s about to start storytelling, one of the many things he’s wonderful at doing, but his breath is paused by the sharp squeak he’s been listening for since he brought Eren inside from the barn - the sound of Erna’s bedroom door. 

He takes a deep, relieved sigh as her bare feet pad softly up the stairs. He fully turns around to face the top of the steps, and she appears with her messy bedhead hair, pointing in all directions away from the elastic trying to contain it, frizzy, wild, wavy, and curly, eyes not fully awake and open from her nap yet. Farlan sighs dreamily and waves at her, getting her attention.

While she blinks her eyes wider, she asks, “Why are you in my house?”

“Told you I’d train your groom,” he says cheerfully, pointing to Eren over his shoulder with a proud grin, “He had a lot to learn.” 

Erna places her hands on her hips. “Uh-huh.” 

Prepared for this skepticism, Farlan asks, “Eren, what’s the first thing you do for a colicking horse?”

“Walking, water, and banamine,” Eren rattles off easily, eyes still glued to the bridle in his lap. 

Erna inserts herself before Farlan can give him another easy one, and asks, “What color ribbon do you tie to a stallion’s tail before sending it out at a show?”

“Yellow.”

Erna quickly asks the additional trick question she has ready, “And on the west coast?”

Eren doesn’t hesitate to answer correctly with, “Blue.”

“Fuck,” Erna hisses as Farlan reaches and gives Eren a congratulatory slap on the shoulder, too hard, making the boy wince in pain. Erna shrugs and continues on her way to the kitchen. She calls from there, “That deserves a shot.”

“Not until he’s done!” Farlan yells back. Eren’s so close to being able to assemble this bridle on his own. 

“Yeah, no, I meant for me,” she says, reappearing with a bottle of whiskey and an empty rocks glass, both from the fridge judging by the condensation suddenly formed all over both. 

“I fall more in love with you every passing minute,” Farlan tells her as she sits down, unselfconsciously flopping onto the middle of the couch right between Armin and Mikasa. She ignores him entirely, as her eyes lock onto the tv screen and she scoffs, tilting her chin up while pouring herself a drink, and saying with absolute enmity, “This goddamn mess.”

Farlan turns to see she’s looking at a member of the Italian national team, the whole of which he’d completely agree is a goddamn mess but for one or two star riders, sort of like her own country's national equestrian team, if he's being honest. She holds her glass between her knees and twists the top back on her bottle while she mutters under her breath, “He can’t even balance. He’s looking down at the jumps. That horse is a fucking saint.”

“Fucking disgrace,” Farlan agrees casually, then he points at her glass and says, “I’d go for one of those.”

Erna raises her eyebrows at him like he has a lot of fucking nerve. She tells him, “I’m poor. This is my one bottle of whiskey. My next paycheck comes next week. If you would like a shot, you can pay prohibition prices.”

“Fair, fair,” he says, quickly placating her, and pulling a bill out of his pocket. He doesn't know conversion rates, but he thinks this is similar to the money he’s used to and hands her a fifty. 

She narrows her eyes and snatches it from him to quickly shove it in the pocket of her jogging shorts. Like the terse little businesswoman she is, she hands him the glass that she just poured for herself and stands, turning and flouncing back to the kitchen. When she comes back, Farlan stops her, holding up the glass she just surrendered to him. She tilts her head at him, confused at his intention, and he points at the new rocks glass she brought back from the kitchen, free of a wet coating of condensation. “You take the cold one.”

He appreciates that she doesn’t do the hospitable thing and argue. She switches glasses with him and bends at the waist to set the bottle on the carpet next to him before falling back to the couch where she scoffs, sips, and asks, “Where the fuck is this, Portugal?”

“Aye.”

“These rich, entitled men are disasters. Look at that bouncing. He’d fall off if that horse weren’t so good at balancing him on its back.”

Eren looks up and looks at the screen like he’d like to be able to see what Erna’s talking about, like he can’t tell himself what makes good riding over bad riding. Farlan barks at him again to keep working, and the teenager remembers, “You were gonna tell us a story about Levi.”

“No,” Erna deadpans. 

Farlan smirks. “What if it’s an embarrassing story?”

Her eyes sparkle. She sits up, leaning forward and placing her elbows on her knees. “Only if it’s  _ really _ humiliating.”

“What other kinds of stories did you expect me to have?” Farlan smiles and gets right into it. “So it’s literally the short, sour fuck’s first week on the farm. We’re eight years old. There’s a stallion to be gelded and Kenny tells us we’re meant to help him…”

Erna perks up and interrupts to say, “I already love this story.”

……………………………………………………………………………………..

  
  


“I don’t fucking understand it,” Levi rants, “She flashes me her thighs and ass for hours, admits to leading me on, and leaves - actually just leaves - the absolute gall."

“What’d she say?” Isabel asks, with a long, high upward inflection full of excitement.

“She said she didn’t want to  _ do _ anything. That it was a  _ bad idea _ ,” he quotes with inflection as if it's utter nonsense. 

“What? On account of workin’ together? That’s the most convenient setup like?” she squeals with incredulity. 

“I know,” Levi agrees. He’s all about convenience and efficiency, even when it comes to this. Another reason he might not do well in relationships. “So I write it off.”

“I wouldn’t.”

“Aye, because we know how you deal with rejection,” Levi tips the mouth of his beer toward her. 

“Revenge,” she says very matter-of-factly. 

Just as he’s nodding, Levi’s struck hard inside his head with an intense, high pitched ringing and he winces. Isabel asks him what’s wrong and he shakes his head. It’s so loud he can’t hear her for a moment. He presses his right ear, then quickly gives himself a smack to the back of the head. The ringing stops. He tells her, “Nothing. Tinnitus.”

“Too many concussions,” Isabel scolds. 

“I’ve only had three.”

“One is too many.”

Levi rolls his eyes at her. “Eight is too many. I’m not even halfway there.”

“How do you figure…” Isabel squints at him, shakes her head, decides she’ll give him a talk about chronic traumatic encephalopathy later, and says, “Wait, so when did the hayloft happen?”

“Feels like right after that?” Levi tries to remember, “Which, additionally, what the fuck is that?”

“It’s mad,” Isabel answers. “Especially for you.”

“Not a fan of fuckin’ outdoors.”

“I know,” Isabel groans like she’s heard it before and she doesn’t agree. “Well… hayloft would technically be indoors, wouldn’t it?”

He gives her a look like she knows better than that and tells her, “It was dirty as fuck.”

“That’s what makes it better, you fucking prude.”

“The fuck is wrong with wanting to be clea --” He shakes his head and cuts himself off. He waves his hand like he needs to table that for now. “It had to be three days after like, because she was aggressively giving me shit for what felt to be at least thirty six hours.”

“Bout what?” Isabel’s eyes widen. She thinks that’s bold. The only people bold enough to give Levi shit surrounding his work are herself and Farlan - and, of course, Kenny Ackerman, the mean ol' bastard. 

Levi’s hands shoot out, gesturing manically as he shouts, “Everything!”

There’s a long pause as Isabel waits to respond. Then, she says, “I’m still not following how this led to a literal roll in the hay.”

“Because?! I just fucking hate her. I don't know. I had to.”

“Why would you feel like you have to fuck someone you hate? That’s so disturbing.” She frowns in a genuinely concerned expression at him. 

“Because…” he tries to explain the logic of it. “She…”

Isabel gingerly sets her beer down on the counter and holds her chin, analyzing Levi with knitted brows like a therapist. He gets defensive. “She just…”

“Alright, well, putting aside the fact that you may be a dangerous psychopath who hates women--”

“Fuck off!”

“So we have evidence that she thinks you’re a ride.”

“Overwhelming evidence,” Levi tells her, frustration darkening his voice.

“But she’s been letting Farlan take her out and buy her things? While you bitch about both of them to me?”

“Aye. Gold-digging cunt,” he mutters.

“Well,” Isabel says as she looks upward and thinks about the situation. She eventually says, “I like her very much.”

“Of course you do,” Levi groans.

  
  


……………………………………………………………………………………...

  
  
  


“So Levi’s only meant to hold this fuckin’ horse down. It’s already tranquilized, lying on the ground, and all he has to do is keep his knee on its neck. I, being the generous soul that I am, took the harder job of assisting with the surgery,” Farlan tells his attentive audience, smiling at how interested even Armin and Mikasa are now.

Erna interrupts him to cut him down. “So you held the balls after they got cut out?”

“I mean,” Farlan looks sideways, “I had to hold the knife as well while he was stitching the cut up.”

She smirks and nods, “Heavy responsibility.” She’s been assigned the same job many times before. She’s also been the one to hold the horse down with her knee on its neck. She can thoroughly appreciate this story. 

“Anyway,” Farlan says quickly, “Levi’s holding the horse down easy. The thing isn’t even struggling. Kenny always over-tranquilized ‘em like, but especially this time, because we were helping for the first time. All’s going well. Kenny makes the cut, scoops the beast’s bollocks out, plops them in my hands…”

Eren swallows, the only one negatively affected by Farlan’s description - Mikasa and Erna both lacking the empathy to be disturbed, and Armin being unaffected as an aspiring veterinary student whose idea of fun is watching surgeries like this on YouTube. 

“And all I hear is a thud, and there the little bastard is, passed right the fuck out, lying in the straw. Kenny’s beside himself for the only time I’ve ever seen before or since, not knowing whether to try to tend to the wain or stitch up this horse’s open ballsack.”

Erna smiles warmly. Imagining Levi as a kid, much less a vulnerable one, is strangely humanizing. 

“That’s just the first time he fainted. I’ve got loads more stories that end with Levi fainting, if you like that one.”

“Yes, please,” Erna sing-songs, leaning back into the couch and sipping her whiskey slowly while her eyes fix on the next rider on the tv screen.

“So,” Farlan claps his hands together, “Kenny, was always in the business of buying and flipping any prospect he could find. We’re ten years old, and he comes back from auction with this thirteen hand pony. White coat, white mane and tail, perfect little children’s birthday party shit, but an absolute bastard. Meaner than Kenny himself.” Farlan crosses himself from forehead to chest to left shoulder and right. 

“Name,” Erna interrupts him to demand.

“It’s too good,” Farlan warns her. “Corky… Corky the pony.”

Erna nearly spits out her whiskey. She has to cover her mouth with her hand while she snorts with laughter.

………………………………………………………………………………

  
  
  


“I think she’s onto something,” Isabel tells her friend as she backs away from him. When her waist hits the counter of the wet bar, she stops, spins on her heels to face it, and gracefully picks up a glass and a bottle. 

She lets the bottom of the heavy glass hit the bar loudly, without frowning at the noise like Levi does. As she’s holding up the bottle and squinting at the label, she elaborates, “I mean, keep one fit guy for fooling around.” She uncaps the bottle and pours. “And a well-meaning idiot for taking you out on dates and buying you things. I, of course, would be the cute bisexual friend providing free emotional labor and all of the humour…”

“You’ve a very high opinion of yourself.”

“I’m a delight and you know it.” She gulps her drink down in one go. “What’s the well-meaning idiot doing right now anyway?”

“Oh my god,” Levi groans, upon being forced to recall. “The fucking day I’ve had. First Eren - “ Levi stops when Isabel cocks her head for explanation. “The groom. He gave a horse I’d just hacked a bucket of cold water.”

“Oof.”

“I know!” Levi throws his hands in the air. “So I lost my temper.”

“Shocking.”

“The horse could have died, Iz.”

“That is fucking awful, not to lie.”

“And this bitch dresses me down for it and forces me to go talk to the kid because he gets traumatized if you so much as look at him wrong.”

Isabel cackles loudly upon hearing this. Levi frowns at her. Then he tells her, “Then Farlan starts doing her barn chores so that she can fuck off for the day.”

Isabel lets out a loud, sadistic laugh. 

“Then he decided to stay, under the guise of training that incompetent brat. He’s a fucking embarrassment. I’m embarrassed by proxy.”

……………………………………………………………………………………

  
  


“Kenny has Levi training this cute demon of a pony every day, and the two only ever grow to hate each other more intensely and more personally every second they’re forced to be together. It was fucking grand. I’ve never seen a horse take such a disliking to a person as this wee pony took to Levi.”

“Wait, so he passed out from heat stroke?” Eren asks.

“Aye, keep up.”

“In the middle of riding?” Erna inquires, knitting her brow.

“Aye, Kenny has a liking for workin’ people to death.”

Erna opens her mouth, but nothing comes out. She’s thinking. Then she hazards a guess. “Is that why he’s such a dick about the heat?”

“Never thought about it…” Farlan says, pausing and giving it a moment of thought before returning to the subject at hand, “The salient point was that Kenny was trying to make Levi and the pony both learn dressage because the person he had interested in buying it only wanted something that could do two-day eventing for heir wain.”

“Okay,” Erna says hesitantly, concern still showing across her face. “I mean, I took away that his uncle made him practice circles in the heat until he passed out, but sure…”

Farlan shrugs. “If he’d gotten the circle right, wouldn’t have had to do so many of ‘em.”

Erna tilts her head one way, then another, then says, “Okay, fair enough,” tips her drink, and nods.

…………………………………………………………………………………….

  
  


“He’ll get bored, right?” Levi asks Isabel across the room, defeatedly pushing his beer aside and leaning fully on the counter, pushing his hair back from his forehead. “I’m counting on him losing interest. He always does.”

“Well, I think the ideal situation for you,” Isabel offers optimistically, though with a dark, sarcastic edge, “is that he lands her, ghosts her, like he does, breaks her heart, and then you can pick up the pieces.”

“That’s disgusting.”

“Right,” she says, as if he proved her point, “So maybe you should tell him, you absolute walnut.”

Levi gives her a pained look. 

She rolls her eyes at him and says, “You know he’d stop if he thought you had feelings. There’s nothing more important to us than you.”

“That’s so easy for you to say,” he sneers at her. “You’re not risking getting hit in the fucking face.”

“Don’t be such a baby.”

“It fucking  _ hurts _ , Iz!”

……………………………………………………………………………………………...

  
  
  


“So Kenny has Levi chasing eventing points with this pony to get it a ranking and prove that it’s worth five or six figures. Iz and I ran along to every single show to rag on him about doing dressage--”

Erna breaks in to turn her nose up and echo, “Dressage,” in a snooty, nasal english accent.

“Exactly.” 

Armin asks, “What’s wrong with dressage?”

Erna scoffs. So does Farlan. Then Erna shouts, “There isn’t even any jumping!”

“What’s the fecking point?” Farlan jeers. “Bunch of dicks.”

“Fucking boring,” Erna chimes in. 

“Utter waste of time,” Farlan says. “Anyway--”

Erna interrupts, sitting up suddenly and almost spilling her drink, “Wait, did he wear the fucking tophat?” She hand gestures a flat palm from the top of her head up as she asks, straightening her spine and turning her nose up.

“Sadly, at that level, they let you wear a helmet.”

“Boo.” Erna slumps again and takes a sip of whiskey.

“That’s what Iz and I said!” Farlan says, then shakes his head, trying to get his train of thought back on track again. “That’s not the important part. The important part is that on the last day of points being counted for the show year, Kenny takes Levi to a local show to pull a win out from under his rival. All he needs is to win the jumping portion with enough points to push him over the edge. Very first fence, pony stops dead, out of nowhere. So that Levi goes flying right over its head.”

“Yay,” Erna smiles.

“What happened?” Eren asks eagerly, on the edge of his figurative seat.

“Disqualified,” Farlan quips. “No points. Completely fucked. We thought Kenny was gonna kill him. But instead of beating his arse, the old bastard just says there’s another show running concurrently, over at another stable. Puts the pony and us on the trailer, and drives us two hours to get to another horse show where he tells Levi he better not fuck up now”

“Does he fuck up?” Mikasa deadpans, because he must if that is not the end of the story.

“He takes the pony into the schooling ring, Corky finally decides he’s had enough for one day, and he bolts to the center of the ring and bucks so hard, at a dead run, so completely ass over head, that Levi goes flying in an arc through the air.” Farlan uses his hands to illustrate the action as best he can. “And his body falls at a perfectly perpendicular angle to the ground, on his head, just vertical, feet pointing to the sky, and he stays like that for half a second before he falls flat. It was glorious.”

“Nice,” Mikasa smiles, because after finding out about how he treated Eren today, she isn’t a huge fan of Levi.

“So Iz screams and starts crying. She thinks he’s dead, rightfully so, as he should have been. A priest ready to read him his last rites followed the doctor into the ring.” Farlan knows that’s exaggerated, it’s just that the emergency doctor also happened to be a priest, but still. “Levi’s reaching up for his head, and the doctor tells him to hold still because he may have a concussion.”

Armin comments, “He  _ definitely _ had a concussion.”

“And Levi, once he gets his breath back, tells the doctor and the priest and his uncle, ‘Fuck off, I need to take my fucking helmet off.’”

“He’s how old again?” Erna asks.

“Ten. Anyhow, now Kenny tells them he’s fucking fine, clearly, and he drags Levi back to the trailer to ‘walk it off’.”

Erna nods approvingly while Armin’s eyes go wide and he says, “That’s the last thing you should do!” 

Farlan continues, “He isn’t about to take him to the hospital like, because he needs those points so that those smug fuckers won’t pull a championship from under him. So he lets Levi rest until it’s time to put him in the ring again, and the pony refuses at the first jump again. Only, Levi, completely fucked off now, or more terrified of Kenny than imminent traumatic brain injury, smacks the beast so hard on the flank with his crop that the fucker lifts its legs to stand up on him and ends up half clearing the jump anyway, bucking right over it, so that it’s only counted as a fault and not a refusal. He finishes the course, gets his points at the end of the day, and is rewarded with a trip to the hospital around ten at night.”

“These stories are fucked up and I love them,” Erna comments admiringly and with wonder.

“You’re gonna love Ireland,” Farlan tells her with a wink. “We can live there half the year or permanently after we’re married of course.”

She rolls her eyes dramatically, then her attention is caught by something out the window, and her mouth forms a little ‘Oh.' Suddenly ignoring her company, she bolts up from the couch and walks quickly to the kitchen. Farlan is the only one curious about what she seems to have suddenly remembered, the others look back to their screens as if Erna suddenly thinking of or remembering things is an all too common occurrence. He hears her open the fridge, close it, do the same to a cabinet, sigh, and then without warning she's rushing for the stairs in a contained, skippy jog.

Farlan nearly tangles himself trying to get up from the floor as fast as he can to keep up with her, uncharacteristically clumsy for just a moment before collecting himself. He follows down the stairs and asks over the jingle of the keys she snatches off the wall, “So where are we going?”

“Would have told you if I had invited you,” Erna says, already walking up toward where the truck is parked and muttering to herself, “Fucking brats. Nothing but fucking Dominoes leftovers in the fridge. Garbage gut teenagers.”

Farlan laughs softly to himself and stays a step behind her. 

  
  


……………………………………………………………

Isabel is pouring Levi a shot, and another for herself, but she’s not counting, while Levi rants, again, about how Farlan and Erna can fucking have each other because they’re each so awful and so insane in their complementary ways. Isabel interrupts him as she slides the glass she just filled down the bar towards him. 

“Literally the first night I’m here, she has me call her and sounds like she’s getting off on the other end. Then she offers to help me find a place to stay.”

“Fascinating.”

“I’m not some fuckboy idiot who just thinks he’s going to get lucky for no reason. She even admitted that I was right to think I was being led on. But she runs out the fucking door when I try anything.”

“Personally, I think women who play mind games are better rides.”

“You just love chaos. I mean, look at you. You’re chaotic bisexual energy incarnate.”

“That’s the loveliest compliment you’ve ever paid me.”

“Right, well, you deserve it.”

………………………………………………………………………………………….

  
  


“Has it gotten more humid?” Farlan asks in frustrated disbelief as they walk toward the barn. 

“Yeah, it does that,” Erna says of the weather like it’s an old dog with its own preferences and habits and quirks. “Gets like a pressure cooker, then it breaks with a big ol' storm.”

“Still no clouds in the sky,” Farlan notes, trying to be careful not to make it sound like he’s implying that she’s wrong. He thinks that might not go well for him. 

Without looking up at it, Erna informs him, “Just looks that way.”

Farlan looks up at the pale blue sky. Erna stops, already red-faced in this heat, and points at it with a frustrated stab of her finger heavenward. “Those are clouds. It’s all clouds. You can’t tell right now because it’s complete cover. They look like sky because they’re so goddamn cloudy and thick.”

“You sure the heat isn’t making you imagine things?” Farlan asks her innocently, mystified about how rain is supposed to fall from a cloudless blue sky. 

“I grew up here. I know what the weather does,” she says bitterly.

Farlan checks the weather app on his phone. “Forecast still doesn’t call for rain.”

“Yeah,” she says, unsurprised. “It’s like that. Doesn’t mean shit.”

“So where are we going?” he asks her again as he grabs the hood and swings himself up into the passenger seat of the truck. She turns the ignition and it rumbles and rattles to life. Hot air blows aggressively out of the vents.

“Obviously we’re getting food,” she answers, rolling down the windows and closing the air vents.

Farlan smiles warmly as he turns his head to stare at her openly while she puts the car in drive, eyes drinking in how much she glows when the sun hits her skin coated with a sheen of light sweat. “Not fond of the heat?”

“I run hot,” she deadpans as she fans herself with her hand.

“Never gets this hot in Ireland,” he offers with a smile. She rolls her eyes. “Have you ever been?”

“I’ve never been anywhere but here.”

“You’d love it.”

“Doesn’t sound too different from here. And I don’t love it here.”

“No? You seem oddly defensive of a place you don't love."

“Hey,” she says, "you don’t get to tell me what’s wrong with this place. I’m intimately familiar with everything that’s wrong with this place, and we can talk about that at length if you want to have a real discussion about English colonialism and unregulated racist patriarchal capitalism.” 

Farlan raises his eyebrows at her and says, “I think I know something about English colonialism.”

“But if you’re just going to throw out, ‘you people’ and talk about stereotypes, then I’m not gonna waste my intellect.”

“We Irish are comfortable with our stereotypes,” Farlan answers with complete insincerity, “Drinking, violence, poetry, what’s not to love?”

“The only culture we really have is finding new ways to be racist. And there’s a rich history of Irish immigrants in this whole area. They built the railroads and the canal.”

“See? Good, strong workers. I’ll take that as well.”

“No, that just means that I have picked up a lot of off color jokes about the Great Famine in my time living here.”

This, Farlan does not have a casual, off-hand, cheery comment for. Finally, he goes silent. His smile disappears. He seems to brood for a moment and Erna carefully peeks from the corner of her eye. Just as she’s thinking it’s almost an attractive look on him, he tells her seriously, “That was a genocide, you know.”

“I do know. That’s why it’s fucked up that we have so many jokes about it. We’re like that. Do you want to hear one?”

“... I’ll pass.”

“Do you want to hear a rant about the U.S. populist uprising of the 1890’s as a direct reaction to the capitalist greed of the Gilded Age? I can tie it into exactly what’s wrong with the electoral college.” She pauses for a breath, answers, “Yes?” for him, and goes right into, “Great. It’s only gonna last two minutes because that’s how long this drive is, but I’ll do my best.”

Farlan smirks, then sighs, “Beautiful  _ and _ brilliant.”

“Okay,” she says, ignoring him, “So this Carnegie motherfucker…”

………………………………………………………………………….

  
  
  


Isabel squints at the hazy sun only just starting to lower itself down to the horizon, still three hours far from evening, but a small relief anyway. She breathes the smell of the grass meadow deep as a slight breeze finally comes in to flutter the dark tree leaves. It’s better, but still not enough to make her stop complaining. When she hears Levi come out the back door with a grunt, she tells him, “Fresh air is overrated.”

“You can’t stay indoors all the fucking time,” he scolds her softly, lifting a bag of golf clubs and carrying it over to where she’s standing. She plucks a driver out just as he’s dropping it to the ground, leaning down to dig a golf ball out of a side pocket. Isabel slips the cover off of the club, flips it in the air, and grabs it by the end as it spins, and responds with an indignant sulkiness, “I  _ have _ jet lag.”

Levi throws a golf ball at her without warning and she bats it out of the sky perfectly with the end of the club, driving it deep into the field. He cocks his head at her. She ignores him, picking her drink up off the picnic table next to her, and says, “Never understood what you and Farlan like about golf. It’s fucking boring.”

“That’s what we like about it.”

“Being boring?”

“No, the fact that you don’t like it.”

“Hilarious, seeing as you two are the ones dragging me all over the world.”

“I did  _ not  _ ask you to come here,” Levi defends, dropping another ball onto the grass, and extending his open hand for the driver. As she tosses it over, Isabel asks him, “Where’d you find these anyway?”

“Laundry room. Must belong to the people who own the place.” Levi winds up and whacks the little white ball to somewhere back along the treeline. Isabel shades her eyes, following its arc, she asks, “So how many balls do we have?”

“This is a lot better with one of the hounds to fetch ‘em,” Levi comments. He plucks another ball from the pocket on the side of the golf bag. 

“You’re homesick,” Isabel tells him just as he’s swinging. Coincidentally, he misses, whiffs the top of the ball, curses, and then yells back at her, “Is it impossible to just make small talk with you?”

“Why don’t you just call Kenny?”

“How do you know I haven’t?”

“Because if you did, you wouldn’t be so fucking homesick, you pansy.”

Levi swings again, nailing the ball hard, sending it into the stratosphere. “Old bastard could’ve called me by now if he gave a single fuck.”

“I cannot imagine,” Isabel croons sarcastically, “why he would think that you’d want to be left alone.”

“Do you think it’s that?” Levi asks her, “Or do you think it’s that he thinks I fucked up and he’s being a cunt?”

“Choosing an underperforming barn that I’ve never heard of to waste your show year on because you, just, impulsively wanted to fuck a fit barn manager like?” She holds her hands out in disbelief.

“That’s not -”

“Isn’t it?” She cuts him off with a judgmental smirk.

Levi covers his face with his palm and groans.

“It’s very out of character,” Isabel says. 

“I don’t know,” Levi sighs, thinking to himself. “I was sleep deprived,” he denies, rather than offering his real excuse which _ is _ that he was homesick. 

“What if you actually caught love at first sight like Farlan’s always pretending to?”

“Do not equate my momentary desperation for a quick fuck with a beautiful woman to  _ love _ ,” Levi says with a disgusted curl of his lip.

Isabel shrugs nonchalantly. “It’s very out of character.”

“Aye, you said that.”

“It’s just curious.”

“ _ You’re _ curious,” is all Levi can counter with, as he’s getting flustered by her. 

“Well, I am.” Isabel grins. “Is it because of how she rides?”

“In which way?”

Isabel cackles loudly and spills her drink all over the grass. 

  
  


………………………………………………………...

  
  


Erna pulls the truck over to the side of the road, half onto the grass and half into the driveway of a neat, rolling, pastoral-looking farm, wrapping up her lecture with, “So basically, we fucked over all the farmers, and then that led to opportunistic politicians using fear and ignorance to encourage more fear and ignorance under the guise of religious freedom, because fear and ignorance makes voters a lot easier to control, and that’s how you get working class people to be anti-union.”

Farlan looks at her dreamily, and says, “I didn’t understand a word of that.”

“Perfect, because these words don’t leave this truck,” she warns him with all seriousness. She’s a raging feminist and a card-carrying communist, but it’s in her best interest if most people around here don’t know it. Particularly the people he’s about to meet. She leaves the key in the ignition and hops out of the truck, not before putting a big smile on her face. Farlan follows her, hands obediently in his pockets

“Hey, Mr. Braus,” she calls, waving, as she walks up the driveway a little, towards the large farmstand with its ramshackle peaked shelter and plywood table piled with bushels of bright tomatoes, bitter greens, berries, and bouquets of cut flowers. 

“Miss Erna,” the stocky man just walking down the hill from one of the barns greets her with a genuine, warm smile. His eldest daughter, waves from her lawn chair and flashes a similar smile as Erna says, “Hey, Sash,” all manners and sunny demeanor, she nods over her shoulder at Farlan and introduces him, then tells Sasha, “He’s never had a jersey tomato.”

Sasha raises her eyebrows playfully, giving them both an incredulous look, she says, “How is that possible?!”

“Not from around here. First time.” Farlan admits, smiling that charming smile, and laying the accent on thick so that Sasha says, “Say no more.” She reaches to pluck a ripe, bright red tomato from the top of a bushel basket-full, and tosses it to him, warning him, “Your first hit is free. After that, they’re three dollars a pound.”

Farlan holds the tomato up, looking at it skeptically, while Erna asks, “How about blueberries?”

“You know they aren’t in season yet.”

Erna crosses her arms and quirks her lips like she thinks Sasha is holding out on her. “The native ones are, and you’ve got acres of forest and two kids running around wild. They didn’t pick any?”

Sasha, avoiding Erna’s sharp stare, picking an apple off the table, and rubbing it on her t-shirt, answers surreptitiously, “You’d have to ask them.” As she’s about to take a big bite, her father reaches them, and tells her, “Sasha, go tell your mother Erna’s here,” in a scolding tone as if she should have known to be doing that already.

Sasha rolls her eyes, dramatically rises from her chair, shoulders slumped and groaning about having to move at all in this heat, she walks away toward the house. Her father then asks Erna congenially, “How are you, dear?”

“Never better,” she lies. “How are things?”

“Oh, you know,” he sighs. “The tractor is acting up and the ground is so dry now this storm is going to wash everything away before it can do any good."

Farlan mutters, “How do you figure,” to himself as he’s flicking open a knife he just took from his pocket and cutting a wedge from his complimentary tomato. Then he pops it into his mouth, and interrupts Erna’s small talk with Mr. Braus with a “Oh, holy shit. My fucking lord, that’s good.”

Erna inhales sharply, elbows Farlan hard, and rushes to say, “I’m so sorry! He’s Irish!” as if that is an explanation for poor manners. Mr. Braus hums low and disapprovingly. Erna then says, “He’s doing some work for Erwin.”

That puts the stern, stoic farmer in a better mood, and he asks, “How is Erwin?”

Erna shrugs. “Healthy and presumably happy.”

“He find a nice woman to settle down with yet?”

“I don’t believe he ever will,” Erna says with a neutral tone.

“Really a shame. Good man like that.”

Erna tries to relax her facial muscles, but she feels the corner of her mouth twitch, and changes the subject so that she won’t reveal how much she hates this old-fashioned, heteronormative brand of small talk. “Hey, do you know if Abby and Alfie have been picking blueberries?”

“I never know what those children are doing. You can look around for them if you want. They were wading in the pond last I saw.”

Erna looks around, squinting her eyes, says, “I got it.” Then she cups both hands to her mouth, and shouts long and very loud, “OLLY OLLY OXEN FREE!”

Mr. Braus chuckles. The sound of children’s laughter flows faintly from somewhere off in the corn field. While they wait for the twins to arrive, he tells Erna, “The hybrid variety will be ready for picking in a couple weeks if you can wait.”

"I prefer the wild ones," Erna says softly, squinting her eyes against the afternoon sun.

Giggling, squealing voices cheer after emerging from the edge of a nearby field of tall, green cornstalks and shout, “ERNA!” as the fraternal twins sprint for the farmstand. She turns and smiles at them, shrugging humbly and saying, “It’s me,” like she doesn’t know why she’s a big deal, but she’ll gladly bask in the adoration of two seven year olds who think she’s cool. 

Each of the twins, upon stumbling to a stop from a dead run toward her, grabs a hand and tries to pull her in a different direction while she plants her feet, laughs, and tells them, “I’m here on very important business! No messing around!”

“But there’s a big spider in the barn! Come look!”

“Oh neat!” she says, theatrically raising her eyebrows. “What did you name it?”

“Irene!”

“Good spider name. I promise to meet her next time. But for now, tell me y’all went blueberry picking.”

“We picked buckets!” Abby shouts.

“Perfect! How much are you charging for one bucket?”

The twins suddenly turn serious, tilting their heads and conferring in whispers. Then, seemingly agreed, they turn their most angelic expressions upon Erna and smile sweetly, saying in unison, “Can we ride the horses?”

Erna smiles so big and wide that for once her lips make a symmetrical curve instead of an off kilter smirk. Her eyes wrinkled with mischief, she bends down and tells the twins conspiratorially, “I think they’re still just a little too big for you.” Abby and Alfie pout in double vision until Erna goes, “But how about a horsey ride on this guy?” and she motions over her shoulder to Farlan. 

They tackle his knees so ferociously that Farlan almost gets taken down. Erna tells him to, “Make it good,” before turning back to Mr. Braus to talk about peaches, leaving Farlan to wrestle with the twins trying to climb him like a tree. 

…….,....,.....,...............,..........,

Levi unfastens the two buttons at the collar of his polo, wondering when he will ever feel tired enough to take a shower and go to sleep. He looks down at the thick, neatly trimmed grass, returns his grip to the handle of the golf club, and practices his swing. Suddenly, from somewhere deep in the meadow, he hears an, “Oi! ‘eads up!” and he instinctively raises his left hand to his face. A little white ball embeds itself in his palm. His face twitches in a wince just before Isabel comes jogging out to the edge of the tall grass. He shouts at her, dropping the ball to the ground and waving the pain out of his hand, “There’s no way that was not aimed.”

With a mischievous smirk, Isabel replies, “Just luck.”

Levi looks down at the ball, squares up, takes a whack at it, and sends it flying over her right shoulder, whizzing past her ear, making her flinch and duck. He calls over, “That you fucking are.” When her pale green eyes pop back up above the grass to glare at him, Levi nods over his shoulder toward the house and says, “Get us a pint while you’re off your arse.”

“Get  _ you _ a pint. My glass is still half full, thanks, dickhead.”

“You’re utterly useless,” Levi drones at her. She tosses another retrieved ball at him and he sends it flying into the meadow. 

“I’ll go home and let you handle Farlan by yourself then.”

“Don’t even joke about that.”

“Would serve you fuckin’ right,” she crows from the picnic table, tipping her glass toward him before taking a sip.

“He wants to go look at horses tomorrow,” he groans. 

“Nothing decent at your girlfriend’s barn?”

Levi has a couple knee jerk reactions to that entire question. His first is, “Don’t say that. Because if you give me shit about it like that, you'll end up saying it in front of him and you’re gonna get me punched in the face.”

“I know,” Isabel drawls, raising an eyebrow behind the rim of her glass. “Strange of you to give me this much control over the fate of your face. Not that you have much to lose.”

“Promise that you won’t say a word to him,” Levi demands, in a serious monotone.

Isabel holds her hand out and says, “Let me see that.”

Levi tosses her the club and watches her take a ball from the back pocket of her shorts. She tosses it up in the air, twirls the club in her fingers, and then chokes up on the handle with both hands and twirls her body in a full spin, connecting with and hitting the ball out of the air before it falls to the ground, and sending it flying off to the right, missing the edge of the house’s roof by centimeters. 

When her body slows to a stop, she turns to face Levi, and tell him, “I liked football better.”

Levi rolls his eyes, because they stopped playing before he even began show jumping. This isn’t about anything, she’s just being evasive. He scoffs and tells her, “I regret confiding in you already.”

“Oh don’t be like that.”

“Never should have reached out to the pair of you, it’s only ever gotten me into shit.”

“But you missed us,” Isabel sings at him, tossing the golf club to him with a flip. “It was adorable that you thought you’d like being without us for the first time,” she teases as she produces the last golf ball from her pocket, and drops it onto the toe of her weathered, black leather paddock boot, balancing it perfectly as she lifts her foot. 

Levi sighs, turning away from her to look far off into the meadow and work on his drive again. “Wouldn’t say I missed you.”

Isabel kicks the golf ball from one toe to another, never letting it touch the ground. “No,” she responds, “You just got rejected by the girl you like, started getting anxious that you might not be as perfect as everyone keeps saying, and needed us to come build you back up, because you have the emotional resilience of a five year old.”

“Are you here to build me back up?” He mutters sarcastically, then shouts over his shoulder, “You’re doing a lovely job,” before slicing the air again. 

Isabel kicks the ball up in the air with one foot, then kicks it at Levi’s head with the other. He senses it coming, and without turning to look, his right hand reaches out to catch the ball and drop it safely to the ground before driving it off into the horizon. She huffs and rolls her eyes at him, jeering, “You were away from us for three days and you fucked off half the most famous trainers and riders in this country, settled in this nowhere place, tried to fuck your barn manager, then succeeded, but were apparently so bad at it -”

“Oi!”

“Well all I’ll say is I’ve never hated a man after a  _ good _ ride the way she seems to hate you.”

“Keep talking while I’m still holding this club,” he reminds her, keeping his head down, and bringing his arms up and back to follow through with another practice swing.

“So she rejects you, you reject her, and then you’re supposed to be even? Is that how it works with you people?”

“What’s you people?”

“The straight, cis, and emotionally stupid.”

Levi drones at her in a serious monotone, “Do you know that you’ve been an unbearable cunt since you graduated with your psychology masters?”

“Uh,” she sneers right back, “Did you know that you’ve been an unbearable cunt since you were eight?” She sits down on the picnic table bench and lifts her drink to her lips again. 

“Lovely,” Levi turns to her with a sour, derisive look, “Ladylike.” She sticks her tongue out at him after finishing her drink with a burp. “Go fetch the feckin’ balls.”

“Not on your life.”

“‘Scuse you?” He raises an eyebrow at her. 

“You don’t hear that thunder?” She asks him disbelievingly. “You go out into the middle of a grass field looking for balls then. Bring the club with you.”

“What thunder? It’s clear as fuck.”

“If you’re so confident about it, then go ahead.”

Levi looks up at the sky, denying that it looks any hazier than earlier. 

……………………………………………………………………………….

  
  
  


“Alright, lad, not the ears,” Farlan shouts as Sasha’s little brother Alfie finally gets a good seat on his shoulders and grabs his head. Erna ignores this entirely, in favor of asking Mr. Braus when the Steppingstone Farm is going to be cutting hay and if they need help knocking bales this year. 

“Oof, fu--” Farlan shouts as Abby grabs her brother’s ankles and tries to pull him down, thus causing the boy to grab Farlan’s hair. It hurts like fuck, but the look Erna shoots him as he’s wincing and about to say exactly what he thinks of these brats scares him more than the pain can hurt. 

She helps him out finally by shouting, “Hey! Blueberries! Hustle or you’re never riding those horses, even if you grow six inches overnight.”

The twins release Farlan and go running up toward the house, screaming with laughter, while Farlan straightens his clothes. Erna turns back to Mr. Braus and mentions that she’s available for hay cutting season this year as her workload at Erwin’s is pretty light, then turns to wave at a tall, stocky woman come out of the house with a big smile and a cheery, “Hey Mrs. Braus.”

The woman reminds Erna to call her by her first name, Sarah, and holds out a bag of carrots, “For the horses,” from among her armload of things that she’s come to force on Erna to Sasha’s clear chagrin. The tall-ish brunette twenty year old trails after and pouts ruefully as her mother presents Erna with a strawberry rhubarb pie homemade with preserves from their own crops last summer. 

Erna refuses once, “Oh, I couldn’t, this is too much,” but never twice. When Mrs. Braus tells her it’s no trouble, they’ve got too much food around anyway, she opens her arms and starts taking baskets and bags of food. Meanwhile, she nods toward the farmstand and says, “I came for tomatoes by the way,” and at this point, gives Farlan a look, like he’s being useless, so he takes the hint and starts taking things out of her arms so that she can carry more. 

Erna hands him the carrots and tells Mrs. Braus, “The horses don’t get treats, by the way, I’m going to eat all of these.”

“That’s why I have two bags for you,” the woman replies, topping Farlan’s arms off with a second bag. 

Erna smiles. “Okay, well then they might get half.” Childish giggles float down from the house as the twins emerge, trying to carry a bucket together. Erna cringes as she sees the bucket tip to one side and the other and she shouts over, “Be careful with my berries!”

When Mrs. Braus deposits a small paper bag in Farlan’s arms, Erna asks, “Is there butter in there?”

“Butter, bread, and apricot jam. I know what you like.”

“Do you have any of those appaloosa apples?”

Mrs. Braus smiles and looks to Sasha, opening her mouth to tell her to go get a basket from the house, but not even needing to before her daughter is turning on her heel with a groan. The twins run up, skid to a stop, and ask with a laugh, “Why do you call them that?”

“Appaloosa?” Erna asks with theatrical pronunciation. She gets down on their level and says, “Didn’t you know spotted horses are called Appaloosas?”

There’s a chorus of ‘no,’ from the twins. Mr. Braus tells her, “You’re thinking of the keepsakes.” He tells Farlan, “They’re like a honeycrisp apple.” 

Erna, still squat down on her heels and teasing the twins, says, “And they’re spotted like appaloosa horses.”

“How do you know?” Abby asks challengingly. 

“I’ve seen ‘em,” Erna sasses right back. “The horses and the apples.”

“When are you gonna teach us how to ride?”

“Sometime after I find out what my damage is here,” Erna tells Abby.

Mr. Braus tells her an absurdly low amount for the pile of food Farlan is carrying, and Erna says so, but his wife tells her that all those are gifts, then tells Erna that she doesn’t look like she’s eating enough. Farlan tells them not to worry as he's taking her out for dinner later, Erna tells them that he isn't, and makes a 'yuck' face at the children. 

Sasha picks up a basket of apples and rushes to walk to the truck alongside Farlan so that she can tell him that she  _ is _ free for dinner. 

Erna parts with a, "Sorry to run, but it's 'bout to rain," which is just as true as the truth that she is highly uncomfortable with polite social interaction and will do anything to get out of it.

She reaches into the pocket of her shorts and pulls out the fifty dollar bill that Farlan gave her earlier. It's already wet with sweat that soaked through her clothes. She waves it out, then hands it to Abby before walking away, so that she is already far enough to feign being unable to hear when Mr. Braus sees it and protests. 

Erna reaches the truck, waves, and hops in. She makes sure Farlan got everything, including the blueberries. He jump startles when the truck door is finally closed and Erna slaps him hard on his upper arm and shouts at him, "I've never been more embarrassed."

"What?!"

"They're Mennonites, you asshole."

"I'm sorry, I have no fucking clue what that is, love," he apologizes halfheartedly while rubbing his arm. "How many bruises are you trying to give me?"

Erna jams the key angrily into the ignition. "You can't just go cursing around polite people like that."

"It's a force of habit," he laughs, not seeing what the big deal is, but deciding that it's cute when she's angry, and he doesn't mind making her seem cute.

"You come here, you insult my home -"

"Oi, the third thing you said to me was that my accent was dumb, Miss Erna," he teases, using the Braus’ nickname for her.

"You  _ argue _ with me when I say that it is going to  _ rain _ ," Erna continues, ignoring him, and now beginning to think more about Levi, again, because she always seems to be thinking about him when his friend is dogging her every step and making her life hell.

She pulls out onto the road, and Farlan swears he can hear some kind of dull white noise a ways off. He points out, "You curse more than I do, by the way," but is distracted, looking out the window. He looks back to see if she's still angry, and smiles when she's scrunching her nose, squinting at the windshield, and muttering, "Fuck."

"Thanks for proving my point."

There's a startling knock as a rock hits the windshield. Farlan thinks it's a rock anyway. Erna suddenly reaches to close her window as she keeps driving, past the road to her house. Farlan asks where they're going as something else hits the roof of the truck. He looks out the windshield to see what they're suddenly being pelted with and is in awe of the suddenly ominous grey color of the sky that he swore was a bright, white hot light blue earlier.

Erna pulls the truck over, under cover of a shade tree between its field and the road. She takes the keys out of the ignition and sets them on the dash. 

“Why have we stopped?”

“You’ll see,” Erna assures him. Meanwhile, she settles in and starts texting Eren to tell him that the horses better have already been fed. 

There’s another ‘plunk, plunk,’ against the roof of the truck and Farlan finally asks, “What the fuck?” with curious wonder. The sky out beyond the curve of the river is blackening. Erna points to Farlan’s door and tells him, “Gonna want to roll that up.”

A spherical little piece of ice hits the road in front of them while Farlan is still looking at the clouds. His hand goes to the handle for the window and he cranks it shut as another piece of hail hits the hood of the car. 

He hears the rain roaring before he can make it out in the distance. The wind picks up and buffets the side of the truck. Erna, unfazed, with lowered eyelids, points at the basket at his feet and says, “Hand me an apple.”

By the time he’s done as she’s asked, he can’t hear her take the first bite. He can see her clearly, but the steady deluge of rain bearing down on the truck is deafening. Erna takes bite after bite of her apple, tapping her fingers against the steering wheel, and for once, Farlan cannot maneuver her with his words. He has to sit and wait. He huffs to himself, blowing his hair out of his eyes so that he can see the first bolt of lightning split the sky in front of them. Thunder rocks the earth, the truck, vibrating deep through his chest, so intense and explosive that he unconsciously flinches. He can’t help it. 

When he looks to Erna, she’s smirking, eyelashes lowered, chewing on a big bite of crisp spotted apple. 

…………………………………………………………………………………….

  
  


Isabel smiles at Levi from her stool at the kitchen island as he bursts in the door from out back, dripping wet, protesting, “This is utter shit. Forecast said nothin of rain.”

He ignores her smug grin, walks past her, straight to the stove, his hand shooting for the kettle. When he starts filling it with water, Isabel comments, “Aren’t you supposed to be cutting back on caffeine?”

“According to who?”

“Makes your anxiety worse, you know.”

“Feck off.”


End file.
